South Africa's Electricity Shortage: The Plan That Was

One thing that people seem to be overlooking is that Eskom's electricity supply problems originate or could be solved in Zimbabwe, DRC and Mozambique.

How so? Twenty years ago around 1997 I was working with the forecasting engineer for ZESA, the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority.

Most people seem to be unaware but there is a body called the Southern African Power Pool. The electricity transmission grid of the region is linked from Tanzania to Cape Town. That means power generated in say Inga Dam in the DRC can be utilised in Port Elizabeth through the common transmission system.

Those familiar with power system economics may know that the cheapest form of electrical power is hydroelectricity. You build a dam and gravity does the work for you for decades. Coal power stations are expensive and difficult to operate.

With a hydro-plant you just open your sluice gates and within minutes you are ready to synchronise your unit to the grid system.

With a coal plant it is like lighting a braai fire. You have to get the fire right before you put the meat on. And that is a very small fire which does not require precision or very high temperatures.

With a coal boiler it takes several hours to a day to get the boiler temperature right and steam generation going. So say if an alternator has a problem and you fix it 30 minutes you may spend the rest of the day just getting the boilers going again.

While I was working with the ZESA forecaster we discussed the electricity needs of the region, by 2007. Then that was ten years in the future. Expert opinion was that demand in South Africa was going to grow strongly due to increased domestic demand as the black population was brought online. The natural growth of industry and commerce was also expected to increase at above average rates due to the fact that the black population would now be participating more in those activities without racist restrictions of the past.

I remember going through Mr Ikhupileni Dube's spreadsheets which indicated that by 2007 South Africa was unlikely to meet it's own demand. What SAPP experts considered to be the most optimum option then was that Zimbabwe and Zambia would build Batoka Gorge, a long talked about additional power station on the Zambezi upstream of Kariba, DRC would increase capacity at Inca Dam and Mozambique would increase capacity at Carbora Basa and those countries would supply South Africa with cheap hydro-electricity.

That was in 1997 and thinking was that governments would provide funding and definitely by 2007 and latest by 2010 more hydro-capacity would be available in the SAPP. The Matimba-Insukamini transmission line was build around the time as part of the strategy to increase transmission capacity to South Africa.

The longest DC transmission lines in Africa, Inca - Kolwezi build in 1979, and Carbora Basa - Apollo Substation (in Midrand) build in 1982 were built as party of the strategy for South Africa to tap into the cheap hyro-power potential of large rivers to the north.

That is what experts thought.

I find irony in that infrastructure to that end was built by the apartheid government despite countries being hostile to it, while the post-apartheid government seems to have the opposite intentions. We will build everything on our own, is their thinking.

Zimbabwe descended into economic chaos, DRC into war and in Mozambique nothing significant happened. In Zimbabwe the mismanagement is so bad that the country is now having to scrounge for electricity from South Africa despite its much smaller population and the massive hydro-potential of the Zambezi.

It looks like South Africa decided to go it alone and rely on its coal reserves, which are expensive . You have to mine the coal and transport it constantly. It is also  less reliable. You are working with high temperatures thus your MTTF (mean time to failure) is bound to be short compared to hydro.

South Africa scrambled to build Medupi and Majuba power stations. I think it was part necessity and part isolationist thinking.

However building very large coal power stations has its own drawbacks. A failure can knock out your grid by removing significant capacity. Recovering from the failure will take long if boilers need to be restarted. Recently I observed another problem, the high demand for labour in mining and transportation increases the possibility of labour issues halting power generation. It also exposes your system more significantly to workmanship issues. A driver strike almost caused the shutdown of several power stations in Mpumalanga.

I am no longer involved deeply in energy scenarios and I am not sure what the experts think is the best long term strategy now. But the politicians do not seem to be thinking about the hydro-potential up north because I have not heard anyone mention it.