[HN Gopher] South Africa's national electricity crisis to worsen
___________________________________________________________________
South Africa's national electricity crisis to worsen
Author : herodoturtle
Score : 118 points
Date : 2022-11-20 19:05 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.news24.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.news24.com)
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| Typical African country. I've always wondered what's wrong with
| my continent. You can't literally point to a single African
| country that's developed and successful...corruption and
| incompetence rules every sector here...so horrible.
|
| Sorry for my rant :(
| fatneckbeardz wrote:
| i tend to disagree. Africa has some countries with very good
| GDP growth over the past 20 years, higher than some developed
| countries (Japan) that are struggling with debt and demographic
| collapse.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| Please name some...I really want to have hope. Most times,
| the countries people name like Rwanda are definitely
| improving but still far behind on a global development scale.
| Sure, Japan is struggling, but Japan's struggles seem like
| paradise to the average African country's struggles.
| pepperonipizza wrote:
| Ethiopia was having a rapid growth before covid.
|
| I am not sure after covid and the war in Tigray how it's
| doing at the moment
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Africa has some countries with very good GDP growth over
| the past 20 years
|
| The key question is: just how much of that nominal growth
| ended up back at the population, and how much ended up in
| anonymous Swiss accounts or shell companies belonging to
| autocrats and their families/friends?
| knaekhoved wrote:
| inglor_cz wrote:
| It is my impression that Rwanda has been improving under the
| Kagame rule, but that the improvement is still precarious.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| Rwanda's GDP per capita is $834 [1]. That's way worse than my
| poor country (Nigeria) at $2,085 [2], so that improvement is
| very much in question and under a dictator nonetheless.
|
| Edit: Removed the part describing Kagame as genocidal because
| I mixed up his identity. He's still corrupt and power-drunk
| though.
|
| 1- https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locati
| on... 2- https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?
| location...
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I am ignorant about the details in case of Nigeria and
| Rwanda, but GDP per capita may not be a good measure of
| living standards in nations with massive inequality.
|
| A couple of ultra-rich oil tycoons in an otherwise poor
| country will artificially increase the per capita figure.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| To boost the per capita GDP of Nigeria from $834 to
| $2085, your two oil tycoons would need to have annual
| income of more than 130 billion dollars each.
|
| A couple of ultra-rich people can't really move GDP per
| capita figures anywhere; that's not how averages work.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| By "a couple" I meant something like several thousand. A
| tiny minority within the entire population.
|
| How many are, for example, the Saudi princes? Five
| thousand or so?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Saudi Arabia's population is 38.5 M.
|
| Nigeria's is 225 M.
|
| That's the denominator difference.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| First, you are getting this casualty reversed if you
| think a few thousand billionaires just drop on a poor
| country, raising GDP. What happens is wealthy countries
| give rise to wealthy elite, and poor countries have
| poorer elite. The billionaire's income cannot just be
| added to GDP, and removing the billionaire does not
| reduce GDP by the amount of his income.
|
| We can do a thought experiment -- let's say Taylor Swift
| makes $100 million. Does that mean she increases GDP by
| $100 million? No, because part of that $100 million is
| taking money away from other uses, e.g. someone with a
| fixed entertainment budget going to see her instead of
| doing something else. Only the resulting increase in
| overall income -- if any -- is the measure of how much
| Taylor adds to GDP.
|
| GDP is the sum of total final production in an economy,
| and while a billionaire may play an important role in
| organizing production and encouraging more production to
| happen, it's usually the case that if they were never
| born or left, the economy would continue with other
| replacements for the billionaire's contribution. The
| replacements would be less efficient and so output would
| be a bit smaller. That difference is the contribution to
| GDP, not the billionaire's entire income.
|
| And if you talk about Saudi oil princes, then they are
| not producing anything at all. Make those Oil princes
| disappear, and Saudi Arabia's GDP would be unchanged.
| Actually it would certainly increase, since imports
| subtract from GDP and those oil princes like to stash
| their wealth overseas and import luxury goods.
|
| Bottom line, please don't confuse household income with
| national income, they are different beasts, and you
| cannot increase or decrease national income in a material
| way by adding or removing rich households to the country,
| anymore than you can make a business increase or decrease
| in revenue by paying the CEO more. Rather, CEOs of high
| revenue companies earn more, and those of lower revenue
| companies earn less. You can't just look at a company
| that is earning less revenue and say "Oh, just add a few
| thousand highly paid executives to the company, and the
| revenue will be way up".
| kragen wrote:
| > _What happens is wealthy countries give rise to wealthy
| elite, and poor countries have poorer elite._
|
| This does occasionally happen, and by choosing your
| definition of "elite" carefully enough you can make it
| happen in more cases, but it is generally not the case.
| Poor countries generally have much greater inequality
| than wealthy countries, with the result that elites in
| poor countries (say, top 1%, 5%, or 10% by either net
| worth or income) are often _wealthier_ than elites in
| richer countries.
|
| > _let 's say Taylor Swift makes $100 million. Does that
| mean she increases GDP by $100 million?_
|
| Generally, the answer in cases like this is "almost".
| Your explanation leaves out what she does with the money
| after she gets it. If she spends it all immediately on
| domestic products and services, then yes, she does
| increase GDP by her earnings, because her spending
| replaces the forgone spending you correctly identify on
| the part of her fans. Similarly if she lends it to
| businesses who use it to buy domestic products and
| services, or if she buys their stock from them or from
| other shareholders who then go on to use it in the same
| way. So-called "entertainers" tend to be quite
| spendthrift, and those from the US mostly spend their
| money in the US.
|
| To some degree Ms. Swift is an exception on this count,
| known for her wise investing, estimates are that she's
| grown her net worth to only US$450 million over her
| 18-year music career, despite currently earning US$150
| million per year from her work; as a very rough
| approximation that means she's spent the first 15 of her
| 18 years of showbiz earnings already, and most of her
| savings are probably also in US stock markets and money
| markets.
| SamReidHughes wrote:
| Kagame being genocidal is news to me.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| Mistake...was thinking of someone else. I stand
| corrected.
| askvictor wrote:
| Imperialism has a lot to answer for.
| winReInstall wrote:
| Yeah, kept china, japan, south-korea and Hong Kong down. 3
| generations later, they still suffer. The atrocities were
| real, the explanation power for current day missery
| diminishes rapidly.
|
| My prefered theory is that human capital stays valuable even
| through crisis and that it pays of to be the direct cold
| conflict zone for two super powers, who then prop you up.
| geysersam wrote:
| China, and especially Japan were never colonized the way
| Africa was. You clearly don't know what you are talking
| about.
| TheLoafOfBread wrote:
| Except when Mongols took over in China or the "century of
| humiliation".
|
| Japan is also example for itself. They voluntarily
| isolated themselves for centuries and fell back in
| everything. They were shocked when Americans forced them
| to trade in steam ships. But instead of finding excuses
| and blaming Americans for waking them up, they started
| Meiji restoration.
| forinti wrote:
| I can think of a few that seem to be developing nicely:
| Botswana, Mauritius, Cape Verde, Rwanda, and Namibia.
| pharmakom wrote:
| I suggest reading Guns Germs and Steel for some context
| concordDance wrote:
| Building institutions and culture takes centuries and can be
| lost quickly. Take heart that the West is burning its cultural
| capital quickly and becoming low trust as people start to
| realize they're in a reputation poor environment.
| User23 wrote:
| Why is that something to take heart in? It sounds ugly and
| spiteful to me.
| thfuran wrote:
| Is schadenfreude not your favorite flavor of ice cream?
| User23 wrote:
| No I genuinely derive joy from seeing others, be it
| individuals or entire nations, do well.
|
| I'm not perfect of course, so sometimes I do feel
| schadenfreude. But I never mistake it for a good thing,
| but rather a sign of my own imperfection.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| More than just that, it takes a lot of luck. You need people
| in power at key moments who can rise to the occasion and then
| peacefully pass along power. You need leaders who build
| institutions and not networks of patronage. You need people
| in place who are willing to accept the constraints of rule of
| law, and to establish that norm.
|
| [*edit] can someone downvoting explain what they disagree
| with here?
| guywithahat wrote:
| I didn't downvote you but you can't really call it all
| luck, because if that were the case you would see a random
| smattering of countries becoming successful and others
| failing, however what you see in the real world is
| continents either being successful or failing.
| Unfortunately I think some of the major actors at play here
| are too politically sensitive to talk about, but I don't
| think there's much luck involved at the end of the day
| knaekhoved wrote:
| lazide wrote:
| IQ is the wrong term IMO.
|
| IQ is attempting to measure intelligence, and generally
| (but not always) ignores things like education, ongoing
| mental load (except for during the test), etc.
|
| Intelligence is generally innate ability, but not what you
| would see day to day 'under load'.
|
| What we're seeing is somewhat different IMO. It's a
| decrease in the available executive function/free mental
| capacity of the population.
|
| Executive function is the ability to synthesize the
| available information (past and present), and create a plan
| which produces the best outcome - and then follow it
| successfully.
|
| Someone can have a very high IQ, and low executive function
| for a number of reasons - disorder (ADHD), bad nutrition,
| stressful or distracting environment, having too high a
| workload, or too much bullshit being thrown at them all the
| time.
|
| Corruption makes it worse because it means it's impossible
| to directly reason about how long something will take, or
| what resources it will take, without going through a bunch
| of opaque and situational hurdles. It also means tests and
| validation can't be trusted, and it's more likely the water
| system will be dangerous/cause disease despite everyone
| saying it's ok.
|
| It burns executive function and decision making ability.
|
| Extra complexity of all kinds does, but bullshit is one of
| the worst.
|
| SA had an evil, but competent gov't so for folks 'within
| the system', things were relatively straightforward and
| worked as expected. That freed up a lot of executive
| function to do even more things that worked effectively.
|
| With corruption and BS (aka say one thing, the other thing
| happens) everywhere, it burns more executive function and
| everything starts to rot everywhere else too, because
| everyone starts to get more and more expensive on the
| executive function side, just to stay alive.
|
| Rather than just driving to a place, for instance, everyone
| has to figure out if it is going to go through a place that
| will get them killed (and /or kidnapped and raped).
|
| Rather than just have working water, they have to spend
| effort figuring out if they need their own supply, how much
| to keep, when it needs to be rotated or treated so they
| don't get sick, etc.
|
| Same with power now, etc.
|
| Often, societies end up stratified into layers based on
| available executive function. Being rich allows someone to
| help educate their kids and shelter them during key years,
| so they learn how to protect and grow that executive
| function, and aren't exposed to as many of the traumatic
| effects that can hurt it. There is also a genetic factor
| that clearly shows up (not along race lines, but along
| family lines - it's pretty clear).
|
| Eventually, folks lose the plot or get pushed down a level
| due to external factors or mistakes. People with particular
| behaviors that fit well to the environment can also move up
| (unless suppressed) using wealth they've accrued due to
| effective function to continue to perpetuate what they
| think is important to have more executive function, hence
| class turnover/mobility.
|
| Having a large swath of oppressed folks (who have had their
| ability to progress or sustain things that give them high
| executive function systematically broken for generations)
| take over for the folks previously maintaining it just for
| themselves, when those folks also disappear, is going to be
| a shitshow every time, for at least several generations.
| milsorgen wrote:
| Meritocracy seems to be looked at with derision by some
| these days. It's a worrisome trend.
| knaekhoved wrote:
| Even if you have notional meritocracy, you're still
| screwed long-term if migration and reproduction patterns
| are dysgenic.
| winReInstall wrote:
| I blame hacker culture, were to gain with little input
| effort, aka a parasitic existence is cherished. Its
| prevalent in lots of places now, including the financial
| sector, were leveraging is more important then long term
| investment. The good thing though is, its self
| destructive, and the resulting riots will know who they
| want to take it out on.
| vsareto wrote:
| Meritocracy is biased for people with money, especially
| if you were born with significant sums.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Still it seems to have better results than outright
| aristocracy or primitive tribalism.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| https://pjmedia.com/culture/jeff-
| reynolds/2017/05/31/things-...
| joenot443 wrote:
| Note this was written in 2017. A lot has happened since the
| which affirms what GP is saying about the degradation of
| cultural capital here in the west.
| fulafel wrote:
| In most other countries this same problem is solved by raising
| prices. Which is better seems a subjective question - the
| zavway at least gives low income people access to some
| reasonably priced electricity.
| akomtu wrote:
| Europe, America, China and even Russia have mercenaries corps
| (e.g. Glencore) that _help_ African countries choose the right
| rulers, and when the ruler isn 't right he gets replaced. The
| right ruler needs to be a chaotic plutocrat who cares only
| about himself and looks the other way when his home country is
| looted. As for IQ, it's a side effect of the above: NK and SK
| are the same people who live under different rulers for less
| than a century, but NKs are already much shorter. My guess is
| that in a hostile environments, the smarts and height genes
| stay dormant.
| zosima wrote:
| It's tribal and there is in most of Africa, no culture for
| rewarding merit or excellence.
|
| But there is always willingness to blame everybody else.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > I've always wondered what's wrong with my continent.
|
| It's a source of raw materials for powers outside of your
| continent, who pour money and arms into the hands of the
| cliques most willing and able to get those materials out of the
| country at the lowest price.
|
| Any hint that a resource-cursed country wants to reign in its
| elites, regulate its environment or labor, or negotiate better
| prices is replied to with a torrent of funds directed to the
| people most willing to murder the reformers.
| jopsen wrote:
| I don't believe every country in Africa have lots of
| resources.
|
| I think it's hard to build institutions, credibility and
| trust in a society.
| lzooz wrote:
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2148945/
| roomey wrote:
| What's wrong with your continent?
|
| This whole thread is making me feel like I'm in an alternative
| reality...
|
| The continent was raped, looted and pillaged by Europeans and
| Americans. Complete populations were enslaved. Natural
| resources were stolen, cultures were destroyed.
|
| And of course, in the best traditions, divisions were sown
| where one set of Native people were marked as better than
| another set, in a move that takes many generations to heal.
|
| My country (Ireland) was colonised, we lost half our population
| to famine and emigration. We, almost, lost our language, out
| culture. We still have sectarian conflict. We didn't have one
| quarter the shit that was done to many parts of Africa. And,
| without Europe's money, we would still be a state completely
| dependent on our former colonisers.
|
| Healing will take time, but to not mention the damage done, and
| still being done there is nonsense.
|
| The top post on this thread is saying the apartheid government
| was bad yes... But they made the trains run on time!
| pixelpoet wrote:
| > The top post on this thread is saying the apartheid
| government was bad yes... But they made the trains run on
| time!
|
| I'm sorry to hear about your difficulties with reading
| comprehension, but if you're suggesting that I'm an Apartheid
| apologist for trying to explain how things got the way they
| are and how it's completely on-brand mismanagement from the
| ANC government, you've got completely the wrong guy.
| recuter wrote:
| > The continent was raped, looted and pillaged by Europeans
| and Americans. Complete populations were enslaved. Natural
| resources were stolen, cultures were destroyed.
|
| Our species is a violent one. The same can be said of other
| continents. Africa had the same problems long before America
| was hardly even a thing.
|
| You could just as easily give counter examples of say gunboat
| diplomacy cracking open Japan and hurling it out of stasis
| and into modernity.
|
| > The top post on this thread is saying the apartheid
| government was bad yes... But they made the trains run on
| time!
|
| You are not doing the people you purport sympathy for any
| favors with such an attitude.
|
| Trains need to run, electric grids need to work. The
| observation on competency in no way implies endorsement of
| the previous government.
|
| People are objectively worse off now, believe it or not (look
| into it before arguing), while you get to moralize from far
| away. Nobody is arguing for a return to the previous regime
| obviously.
|
| What you're doing simply isn't helpful.
| recuter wrote:
| Look at a map of how alphabets spread and literacy rates. I
| think a more productive question would be not what is wrong
| with Africa but what was right with Europe.
|
| Religion played a part. The best selling book after the
| printing press emerged was the Bible and majority of book sales
| revolved around religious texts. There was money to be made
| from this so it spread.
|
| The great leap forward didn't come during the renaissance as
| many people imagine but as late as the 19th. The 20th for
| communist countries.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_literacy_campaign
| Before the campaign, the rate of illiteracy among city dwellers
| was 11% compared to 41.7% in the countryside
|
| Present day Nigeria is still somewhere around 50%, somebody
| correct me if I'm wrong.
|
| Without universal literacy a country can't escape corruption,
| it is a necessary but not sufficient requirement to move to to
| the next stage. Not so long ago most everyone most everywhere
| was an illiterate peasant, the first places to grow out of that
| got first mover advantage.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse
| TheLoafOfBread wrote:
| > The great leap forward didn't come during the renaissance
| as many people imagine but as late as the 19th. The 20th for
| communist countries.
|
| Actually it is more like 18th century in Austria-Hungary
| where compulsory school attendance (6 years long - just read,
| write, count) was established in 1774 School Reform under
| Empress Maria Theresa and the elementary school as I know it
| was established by The Imperial Elementary School Act
| (Reichsvolksschulgesetz) of 1869 standardized compulsory
| schooling as a whole and increased compulsory schooling from
| six to eight years.
|
| Which is very nice history lesson, but does not answer the
| question of "why did European rulers even bothered with
| compulsory education at all".
| tomjen3 wrote:
| >You can't literally point to a single African country that's
| developed and successful
|
| /me lifts hand and point finger to Botswanna.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| yep. It's a small country but it's the oldest democracy on
| the continent, ranks quite highly internationally (30th on
| the democracy index, ahead of Italy), and has a gdp per
| capita only slightly lower than the baltics (20k). By most
| accounts a pretty tremendous success.
| jl6 wrote:
| Any obvious reasons why it has enjoyed this success while
| its southern neighbour hasn't?
| knaekhoved wrote:
| hef19898 wrote:
| That is some pretty disturbing comment.
| xphilter wrote:
| lol. I just love casual racism on HN.
| mikaeluman wrote:
| It is incredible how the collapse of SA, having happened over a
| moderately short span of time, has largely escaped coverage.
|
| The infatuation with the "rainbow nation" and Mandela overcoming
| the evil apartheid government.
|
| But the policies have just been a disaster. And in recent years,
| it's become so bad that we have to read news like this. Anyone
| that can get out, has or is getting out. I worked in a project
| with ppl from Johannesburg; suddenly they had moved to my
| country.
| lgleason wrote:
| The flight out of the country has been happening for a long
| time.
| gatvol wrote:
| Is this a deliberate strategy of the current regime to "dismantle
| the legacy of colonialism"?
| marcusverus wrote:
| > ...the implication was that load shedding would in fact, be
| several stages above stage 4.
|
| For the uninitiated, "load shedding" is a euphemism for "rolling
| blackouts". According to the wiki, Stage 4 load shedding leaves
| 25% of grid users without power. Assuming "several stages above
| stage 4" means Stage 7, that would mean that, at any given point,
| ~45% of grid users would be without power. [0]
|
| Yikes.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_energy_crisis#Lo...
| zx76 wrote:
| This is correct.
|
| Due to how long these power cuts have persisted a lot of
| businesses, industry and the middle class & up have almost
| habituated to the levels up to 4. Shopping centers have
| generators, business parks have full solar and retail stores
| have battery backup. For instance a local clothing chain
| (Foschini) installed 300+ Tesla powerwall setups so that all
| their locations can be totally uninterrupted even with
| 2.5/5/7.5 hours per day of power cuts. Cell towers, fiber
| infrastructure, hospitals, even traffic lights at busy
| intersections all have battery backup these days.
|
| The reason this announcement is making the news is because
| levels above 4, like the two weeks or so of stage 6 we recently
| had are much more problematic. You start to run into issues
| where cell tower batteries can only charge like 80% back up
| with the number of hours powered per day - and so after a few
| days they no longer have enough charge to keep up with the
| interruptions and go offline, disrupting communications &
| internet access.
|
| Additionally the provisions heavy industry has made over the
| years to deal with this become insufficient and you start to
| lose shifts and thus there's a lot of evidence the economy is
| very materially affected at these levels of cuts.
|
| Of course the real weight of this crisis lands massively on the
| poor and disrupts job growth when it's desperately needed,
| curtails foreign and local investment etc. To discuss how parts
| of society can easily function with the lower stages of power
| cuts is not to miss how insane this all is... A society of 60
| million people has largely stood by while this has happened for
| approx. 15 years now. And it's not like this is a matter of a
| poor nation without the ability to invest - approximately $40
| billion USD has been spent by the power utility just in capex
| alone in this period - and afterwards they are producing less
| power than at the start... Quote from a local article: "It
| means that Eskom destroyed 46 GWh of power generation per R1
| billion spent on increasing its power generation." [1]
|
| [1] https://mybroadband.co.za/news/investing/465641-eskom-
| blew-r...
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Of course the real weight of this crisis lands massively on
| the poor
|
| Yes, the poor shoulders this crisis more than the minority
| non-poor. But, it is in their power to fix it, because it's
| the masses of poor that have been voting the same government
| into power repeatedly for almost 30 years.
|
| What would you have us do? Revoke their voting rights? They
| vote for more poverty _every single time_ , and there's
| nothing anyone can do to get them to change there minds.
| eikenberry wrote:
| If they already have the infrastructure they should just skip
| ahead to 100% solar/wind power with no base load
| infrastructure. Storage/batteries at the endpoints makes base
| load redundant and wasteful.
| zx76 wrote:
| The problem is that not everyone can afford battery backup,
| due to the poverty in our society the country basically has
| to have a reliable base load. Coming from the sections of
| society where everyone has solar, inverters, datacenter
| style lipo UPS in their houses etc. it's also been
| interesting to me how inefficient storage at the endpoint
| is. People are spending R300k ($17k) on batteries and
| inverters sized to their houses' peak load, but 90% of the
| time they could actually get by with radically less. I read
| on HN about a company making a smart Distribution Board for
| houses - seemed like a really good idea based on this. If
| you can intelligently manage load you can cut your off grid
| setup cost substantially at minimal inconvenience.
| klipt wrote:
| Yeah all that batteries do is time-shift power usage. If
| there's an overall shortfall of power generation, batteries
| don't really help on a systemic level.
|
| And every little business having its own diesel generator
| is just like building more power stations, but much dirtier
| and less efficient...
| zx76 wrote:
| Exactly. I've had conversations with friends about how
| much less effective load shedding must be now compared to
| when it started because of the proliferation of battery
| backup. At the beginning, an two hour cut would have
| reduced total GWh used substantially. But now, as soon as
| the cut ends demand will spike as batteries charge.
| Without data on just how many batteries there are it's
| hard to work out at what point an additional hours cut
| will be required!
|
| Of course it's not the biggest crisis because grid-level
| electricity usage spikes overwhelmingly at morning and
| evening peaks. So if you can use the power cut schedules
| to shift demand away from these peaks, even if the
| batteries reduce the efficiency a bit, you're still
| having a substantial effect on the required peak grid
| power.
| jasonhansel wrote:
| I'm assuming that the need to recharge all those batteries
| means that, when the power gets turned back on, usage spikes
| very rapidly, making the problem worse.
|
| Since those batteries aren't 100% efficient, a fair amount of
| this power is probably being lost to the batteries
| themselves.
| zx76 wrote:
| Absolutely. That said, the bigger effect is actually from
| geysers since almost every house has one whereas batteries
| are not as widely spread. As the power comes back on the
| geyser will suddenly draw substantially since the temp will
| have fallen during the scheduled cut.
|
| Accordingly there have been big govt. subsidies for geyser
| timers to put on your DB and solar geysers to try reduce
| this effect. Big information campaigns about not running
| the geyser all the time etc.
|
| The consequences can be substantial, the city electricity
| depts. have to continually deal with substations and local
| transformers blowing up (literally, in an explosion, I've
| seen the aftermath!) because of the demand surges. Some
| areas are exempted from the scheduled cuts in my city to
| preserve older infrastructure.
|
| Additionally, insurance companies report big spikes in
| claims from devices being damaged due to the unstable power
| as it reconnects. In my house everything is behind varying
| levels of surge protection, and interestingly I actually
| have SA made surge plugs that don't pass power through for
| the first 5 minutes after powering back on. This way my
| fridge compressor won't be damaged by unstable power (e.g.
| sudden substantially lower voltage, or a surge) as the
| scheduled cut ends.
| lbotos wrote:
| I think "geysers" are a type of hot water heater, yes?
| zx76 wrote:
| Yes. Most houses in SA have electrically heated water
| stored in a tank called a geyser. There are other options
| - some apartment complexes have central heat pump hot
| water, some houses have on demand heating via gas - but
| the most common is something like a 100/150/200 litre
| insulated steel tank in the roof that stores hot water
| and regulates it to 60 degrees C via thermostat.
| lgleason wrote:
| It's what us American's call a hot water tank. Basically
| the same thing.
| liampulles wrote:
| Eish, glad I bought an inverter that can withstand a 4h
| loadshedding block instead of a 2h one, but the economic and
| societal implications of this are pretty horrifying.
|
| Curious if there any SA expats here that can comment on their
| experience of emigrating? I have looked a bit but not very
| seriously. I should mention I do have a Netherlands passport (via
| my father).
| Semaphor wrote:
| Ouch. We are planning to visit my mother-in-law for the first
| time since covid in December. Maybe this isn't a great time, but
| then when will it be.
| pixelpoet wrote:
| As someone who grew up and went to uni in SA, then later
| emigrated to NZ (and later Europe) in 2007, this is completely
| expected.
|
| My understanding is that what happened is, in 1994 when the
| Apartheid government handed over power to the ANC, basically
| everything the government had in the pipeline was scrapped; of
| course it was in many ways an evil government, but it was also a
| surprisingly competent one, the only government to produce
| nuclear weapons and decide on their own to dismantle them or
| something? So anyway, all their plans for much-needed energy
| infrastructure upgrades were scrapped in 1994, and never
| considered again until the rolling blackouts started, by which
| time it was far too late. Since then the nearly universal
| corruption within the ANC and overall state capture meant things
| rapidly got worse, not better.
|
| I distinctly remember writing code to do periodic saves of a long
| running computation's state, because the power would just
| randomly go out, and at one point the power went out while saving
| the state, so I switched to saving A/B alternating state files.
|
| Most of my family is still hanging out in SA and things just get
| worse and worse... don't even get me started on the crime...
| perfecthjrjth wrote:
| Can one blame apartheid governments for today's problems? When
| can one stop blaming the apartheid? Instead of blaming, what
| mistakes that the post-apartheid governments have committed?
| Sure, corruption is one. How about competence? Competence and
| corruption can co-exist, though.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Can one blame apartheid governments for today's problems?
|
| No. Too many other countries suffered worse and bounced back
| faster.
|
| > When can one stop blaming the apartheid?
|
| It will never happen. While the voters are all tribal in
| their support, the one thing they _mostly_ agree on is
| racially-based legislation. In such an environment you do not
| expect the voters to ever dig themselves out of this.
|
| > Instead of blaming, what mistakes that the post-apartheid
| governments have committed? Sure, corruption is one. How
| about competence? Competence and corruption can co-exist,
| though.
| antonvs wrote:
| > No. Too many other countries suffered worse and bounced
| back faster.
|
| For example?
|
| One issue with apartheid is that it essentially withheld
| education from the black population. Sure, it had schools
| for them, but they were nothing like the standard of the
| schools for white children.
|
| So what's an example of a country with an essentially
| uneducated population of tens of millions who "bounced
| back(?) faster"?
| TheLoafOfBread wrote:
| Germany leveled to the ground in 1945, occupied up to
| 1955
| chess_buster wrote:
| Germany made the allies to believe much more factories
| and infrastructure were destroyed than actually were.
| Additionally Germany has been shortly before that the
| scientific center of the world regarding Physics,
| Chemestry, Engineering... So the land of the thinkers and
| poets ("Dichter und Denker") obviously had a different
| starting point, no?
|
| (I'm German, in case that matters).
| inglor_cz wrote:
| In that case, try Poland. It was destroyed very
| thoroughly and methodically, with all the famous German
| attention to detail, so to say. And the subsequent
| occupation by the Soviets didn't help either.
|
| Looking at contemporary Poland, one would hardly believe
| that the country was a heap of ruins and dead bodies mere
| three generations ago.
| TheLoafOfBread wrote:
| What was not bombed down, was looted by invading armies,
| especially in eastern front.
| xnyan wrote:
| With the help of huge amounts of cash and other support
| from the United States. This is also why Japan and South
| Korea recovered so quickly. South Africa did not get a
| Marshall Plan.
| [deleted]
| buyx wrote:
| The ANC is structurally broken: that's the bottom line.
|
| The same sort of intrigue that happens in the Chinese
| Communist Party ruling circles happens in the ANC (not
| surprising since both are organised under the same
| principles), meaning that the leader has unfettered power
| until the next ANC elective conference. Mbeki (competent but
| with crazy ideas about AIDS that were his undoing) and Zuma
| were allowed to run amok. Add cadre deployment to the mix,
| and you can see why South Africa is such a mess...the
| democratic constitutional order is badly weakened when the
| electorally dominant political party is run as a personality
| cult.
|
| I expected Cyril Ramaphosa to be more aggressive in cleaning
| out the rot, and to perhaps reform the ANC structurally, but
| he seems very tentative...
| Gareth321 wrote:
| I agree. Successive governments have had 28 years to build
| and upgrade power infrastructure. Negligence and corruption
| have prevented that. Electricity is just one symptom of a
| much greater problem in SA. Apartheid was clearly immoral,
| but they handed over the keys to a very productive economy,
| on land with some of the best resources in the world, on
| which they had built excellent infrastructure. Since 1994,
| every single development metric has continued to decline.
| Everything from literacy to health outcomes to
| infrastructure. In September, the government passed a
| Zimbabwe-style bill which will allow it to seize land on the
| basis of race (https://allafrica.com/view/group/main/main/id/
| 00083533.html). Within a matter of years we will begin seeing
| famine; in a nation with some of the best and most abundant
| farmland in the world.
|
| South Africa is one of the most beautiful countries on the
| planet. It has the raw ingredients to be a global economic
| powerhouse. What its government - and ostensibly the people
| voting for it - are doing to it is so sad to see.
| karp773 wrote:
| Have they ever tried to emigrate? And if yes, why are they
| still there?
| sgt wrote:
| I think this kind of energy crisis article gives a bit of a
| skewed perspective of SA. South Africa is still an absolutely
| brilliant place to live.
|
| I can say this because, well, I am still here and I am not
| planning on moving. It of course assumes you have a decent
| income and that you don't live in a dodgy neighborhood.
|
| Standard of living is very high. As for load shedding, you
| can easily mitigate this by putting up solar panels on your
| roof, an inverter and a bunch of batteries. You don't even
| need to pay right away, you just bake it into your bond (aka
| mortgage).
| pixelpoet wrote:
| > Standard of living is very high.
|
| Yeah, if you're willing to look the other way and lock your
| car doors in literally the most unequal country in the
| world: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-
| rankings/gini-coef...
|
| And since you're also a Saffer, I don't need to say
| anything about the daily threat from crime, and how
| everyone lives basically in a castle with electric fences.
| Do you have electric fences and private security? Of
| course, just like all the other white people in South
| Africa. Afrikaans was my first language, I know how it is
| over there.
|
| Sorry but I'm going to have to disagree about "brilliant
| place to live", having lived in so many countries
| (including Poland, Czechia, Germany, NZ, England, ...).
| doix wrote:
| > and how everyone lives basically in a castle with
| electric fences.
|
| I feel like this is a huge exaggeration. I'm extremely
| far from an expert, but I'm in SA (right now) surfing and
| it's not that bad everywhere. Cape Town and the bigger
| cities felt like that, but I went through a bunch of
| small surfing towns/villages/suburbs and stayed in a
| bunch of places that didn't have electric fences.
|
| They did have a sticker saying they paid for some
| security company, but that was it.
|
| The inequality is absolutely disgusting though, I agree.
| It's such a shame, because it's such an amazing country.
|
| Staying here longer definitely crossed my mind, so I see
| what people mean by quality of life. The food is amazing,
| amazing surfing and hiking spots, amazing wild-life, the
| list goes on and on. I really wish it was possible to fix
| the inequality, but I can't even begin to imagine what
| that would involve. I did my best to tip well, but
| obviously that makes no difference at the macro level.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > I really wish it was possible to fix the inequality,
| but I can't even begin to imagine what that would
| involve.
|
| It's not possible to do that, because the government is
| fairly and democratically elected[1], and the voters who
| keep supporting this government are too short-sighted to
| see that trying to vote themselves more handouts doesn't
| work in the long run.
|
| [1] When a government stays in power for almost 3
| decades, all the while being fairly elected by the
| voters, and the voters suffer because of it, who exactly
| are you going to blame? What exactly will you "fix"?
| sgt wrote:
| That's often the case - worse in the bigger places like
| JHB. No electric fence for us, but private security
| patrolling the neighborhoods yes (similar to ADT).
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Do you have electric fences and private security?
|
| Sure, but isn't private security and gated living (AKA
| security fences) becoming the norm in most of the middle-
| class suburbs in many other countries?
|
| > Sorry but I'm going to have to disagree about
| "brilliant place to live",
|
| Yeah, I wouldn't go so far as to call it brilliant, but
| my understanding is that, even if I move to another
| country, I'm still going to live in a secure place
| anyway, only it will be much smaller and more expensive,
| both at the same time.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I mean, no, not all other countries.
|
| I moved to small town in Canada on the outskirts of
| Toronto. Literally nobody here locks the door, ever. They
| don't lock their cars, they regularly forget or leave
| their keys in their car. They definitely don't begin to
| have my habit of locking doors when you stop at an
| intersection.
|
| There's more crime in other parts of Canada of course,
| and I enforce a bit stricter security in my own house due
| to my background, but honestly? Much of Canada is almost
| as nice as stereotype would portray it.
|
| Again, not to say it's wonderful all the time for
| everybody everywhere in Canada ; it's not and I try to
| check my definite privilege. But I don't think people
| here really understand what "high crime levels" really
| means, on a world wide scale, and I don't think I've
| really seen a real gated community let alone anything
| like electric fence, outside of US embassy in Ottawa.
|
| FWIW I lived in Winnipeg and various parts of Toronto,
| worked in Ottawa and Nova Scotia, visited Saskatchewan
| and Quebec. There are bad neighbourhoods for sure but
| it's not pervasive and bad neighbourhoods here are better
| than brilliant neighbourhood in some places I've lived.
| ericd wrote:
| Cape Town was absolutely gorgeous when I visited, but the
| level of fortification of normal homes was definitely
| striking, coming from the US. You don't see a lot of
| cement walls topped with glass shards here.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > Sure, but isn't private security and gated living (AKA
| security fences) becoming the norm in most of the middle-
| class suburbs in many other countries?
|
| No. Even in the US, I wouldn't say gated communities are
| the norm, and at least from what I've seen of what SA
| houses look like, they're vastly more serious about
| security than gated communities in the states.
| karp773 wrote:
| It must be more expensive for a reason, right?
| lelanthran wrote:
| > It must be more expensive for a reason, right?
|
| Sure[1], which is why I periodically check what standard
| of living I can expect if I emigrate to any of the
| countries I've visited.
|
| I'm frequently shocked that in places like the US it is
| considered normal to have a 30yr mortgage (I took a 15
| year one, and am on track to pay it of in 10 years).
|
| [1] High level of crime, low level of service delivery,
| shortage of opportunities for my kids, etc. I'm not
| blind, you know.
| damagednoob wrote:
| > ...in places like the US it is considered normal to
| have a 30yr mortgage...
|
| Check the historical interest rates of the US/UK vs SA
| for why that exists.
| pixelpoet wrote:
| I'm suddenly realising that we probably know each other;
| you might remember me from the forums of a SA university
| we went to, I usually go by lycium :)
| lelanthran wrote:
| Yup, remember you :-)
| jamiek88 wrote:
| >Standard of living is very high.
|
| Ignoring the obvious massive disparity you are glossing
| over here I have perhaps a less antagonistic question.
|
| Do you have to spend a lot on security? Some of these
| houses look like compounds with wire fences and huge gates
| etc.
|
| I'm remember the coverage of the Pistorious trial showing
| all that etc.
| lgleason wrote:
| I'm currently looking a houses in South Africa (Pretoria
| East and the Cape Town Area) and can provide a couple of
| data points.
|
| In Pretoria I would only consider living in a security
| estate, Oscar lived in Silver Lakes which is one on the
| east side of town. All of these estates have walls,
| electric fences and armed security guards with access
| controls that require a remote or one time code etc..
| Most houses inside of the security estates have very
| little if any security measures such as alarms etc.
| because the crime inside is generally petty low. These
| estates are very similar to US HOA's with architectural
| standards, many have pools, common ares, golf courses
| etc.. The levies (monthly fees) are usually between $58
| and $174 a month. Taxes seem to run about $100 a month
| for a $260k house and in Pretoria that can get you a 400
| square meter house on a nice sized lot with premium
| finishes and a pool.
|
| The Cape Town area seems to have higher taxes and what
| appears to be some community security that seems to even
| out to the same as what you would pay for a similar house
| (price-wise) in a security estate in Pretoria. The
| difference is that it appears that you can have enough
| coverage with cameras and beams in the parts I've been
| looking at, though many choose to have the electric
| fences for good measure and there are some security
| estates as well.
| sgt wrote:
| We just have an alarm system hooked up to a local
| security company (similar to ADT) which costs about
| $20/mo
| swarnie wrote:
| Unsure if emigration is still a viable option. Most my family
| came back to the UK in the 90s and took a massive hit on
| currency conversion, its got so much worse since then.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Have they ever tried to emigrate? And if yes, why are they
| still there?
|
| Because, while crime is high, and power is intermittent, it
| is not bad enough to make me give up my 700sqm house on a
| 2000sqm plot in a (somewhat safe) suburb close to everything,
| to live elsewhere in about a quarter of the space.
|
| Every time I look at emigrating I face a large drop in my
| standard of living if am in a similar role in any high-paying
| area in the US or UK.
| ununoctium87 wrote:
| Don't forget the cheap servants
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Don't forget the cheap servants
|
| I have a gardener come once a week, and a domestic worker
| once a week. I'm hardly saving money on servants by
| staying in SA, you racist moron.
| Nullabillity wrote:
| That's... exactly the point? A civil society doesn't let
| its income gaps get large enough that the idea of
| domestic servants makes sense.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > A civil society doesn't let its income gaps get large
| enough that the idea of domestic servants makes sense.
|
| Well then the masses at the bottom of the income gap
| should start voting for someone other than who they've
| been voting for, for the last 30 years.
|
| You can't blame the higher-income people for this - they
| have been trying to change the government by voting for
| someone else, but the the low-income people you are
| feeling so sorry for refuse to vote otherwise.
|
| The "civil" society you seek can't happen while the
| masses are still voting the same corrupt government into
| power in _every single election_.
|
| Do you propose revoking their right to vote?
| lgleason wrote:
| In countries like the US that is generally not something
| many software engineers can afford. In South Africa, as
| an engineer that is more affordable and more seem to have
| them from what I've seen.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > In countries like the US that is generally not
| something many software engineers can afford.
|
| So? You think I'm staying in SA just because once every 7
| days I pay someone to mow my lawn?
|
| How much money do you think I am saving by staying in SA
| and paying someone to mow the lawn?
| bojan wrote:
| Genuinely curious, what do you need a 700sqm house for? Do
| you have a very large family, and/or hobbies that require a
| lot of space?
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Genuinely curious, what do you need a 700sqm house for?
| Do you have a very large family, and/or hobbies that
| require a lot of space?
|
| Entertaining guests, large extended family, having enough
| space for both a pool table and a ping-pong table
| indoors, nice to have dedicated study (came in handy
| during pandemic), bedrooms are very generous so get used
| for more than sleeping (e.g. MiL's b/room has all her
| hobbies in it, jigsaw tables, crafts, etc).
|
| People watch TV and kids play games, and they never
| disturb each other.
|
| Large space _is_ a component of standard of living; when
| I talk to people who 've never lived in a large space,
| they can't imagine how their life would be improved by a
| large space.
|
| Asking people "Why do you need a large house?" is like
| asking people "why do you need an SUV?[1]"
|
| [1] The SUV is, IIRC, the most popular class of car sold
| in many countries (excluding commercial vehicles). People
| like nice things. I like nice houses.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I lived on 32 sqm until very recently (I moved this
| Thursday) and now I have 118 sqm.
|
| 700 sqm sound like an endless dusting and cleaning chore
| to me, unless you can afford to have servants.
| eloff wrote:
| People do, but it's hard to get out. There are monetary
| controls, so you have to break the law to get your money out.
| You will also end up with very little once the exchange rate
| and fees are covered. So you will take a huge haircut on
| standard of living. But the standard of living in South
| Africa is something of an illusion anyway with horrific
| crime, a corrupt and incompetent government that confiscates
| private property, a jobs market heavily biased against people
| of non-African descent (very strong affirmative action),
| rolling blackouts, etc. My grandparents opted to stay and
| they did pretty much live out their days in relative comfort
| in their own house - but rarely saw their children or
| grandchildren.
|
| Source: my parents are from South Africa
| perfecthjrjth wrote:
| Monetary controls matter for the uber wealthy. Majority of
| immigrants from the third world are not that wealthy, so
| they either cross illegally or seek asylum. If they are
| qualified to get work visas, that's another option.
| Investment visas are out of reach for the majority of
| immigrants.
| kragen wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cryptocurrency_by
| _... says Bitcoin is legal in South Africa. I believe you
| when you say "you have to break the law to get your money
| out", because you know about a million times more about
| South Africa than I do, but how are they preventing people
| from using Bitcoin to get their money out?
| zx76 wrote:
| There are much stricter rules now, KYC on exchanges etc.
| But up until 2017/2018 I'd say the tax authorities
| weren't paying much attention and I'd be surprised if
| people with money who wanted to get it out didn't take
| advantage.
| buyx wrote:
| In 2017/2018 people could just go to a bank, or one of
| the many foreign exchange companies that operate in SA,
| and transferred their money anywhere in the world,
| legitimately. Exchange controls have been largely done
| away with for individuals.
| kragen wrote:
| Does KYC on exchanges stop you from taking your money out
| of the country if you earned it legally in the first
| place? I'd think that the process would go like this:
|
| 1. Transfer the majority of your legally earned savings
| in rand, on which you have already paid taxes, from your
| South African bank account to a South African coin
| exchange, using it to buy Bitcoin, or Dai, or Ethereum,
| or whatever. Since this is white-market money, KYC should
| be no problem, right?
|
| 2. Transfer your Bitcoin (etc.) to a wallet or wallets
| you control, maybe with multi-signature authorization,
| maybe using an Electrum seed phrase, etc. Presumably this
| is what an exchange is for, right? Buying Bitcoin and
| then sending it somewhere.
|
| 3. Move to New Zealand or the Netherlands or wherever
| your new job is.
|
| Where does this plan fall down in practice today?
| buyx wrote:
| You don't need to do any of this. Exchange controls were
| relaxed a while ago and taking money out of South Africa
| isn't difficult for most people.
| buyx wrote:
| _that confiscates private property_
|
| Private property rights are intact in South Africa (for now
| perhaps, but things are bad enough without the need for
| exaggeration). Also, monetary (exchange) control
| regulations are quite loose nowadays, and shouldn't affect
| normal people trying to emigrate, but as you say, the
| exchange rate makes this a moot point.
| zx76 wrote:
| Exchange control has been somewhat relaxed compared to when
| I'm guessing when your parents left. It used be insanely
| punitive. Provided you have up to date tax clearance I
| think you can now take R11m out the country per year. So
| approx. $600k per year. So people with a higher net worth
| than this who are leaving will have to a take a few years
| to fully financially emigrate, but it used to be much more
| complicated and restricted. If you have a substantially
| larger net worth you can also negotiate with the reserve
| bank! Famously Mark Shuttleworth - the Ubuntu linux founder
| - had a series of big court cases litigating some of these
| rules. He sold Thawte for approx $500m(?) to Verisign while
| South African but then moved to the UK. It's still a very
| unusual thing and foreigners are often surprised that a
| country with western style democracy has some China-style
| exchange controls.
| mradek wrote:
| Not a fan of crypto but this is a legit use of btc buy and
| sell on the other side.
| pixelpoet wrote:
| The harsh reality is that the programming half of the family
| got great job offers and stayed in NZ, the other didn't :(
| karp773 wrote:
| So it's purely paperwork/legal barriers that hold them
| back? Otherwise they would have left?
| pixelpoet wrote:
| Yeah they came with and were not successful in their job
| searching, had to go back.
| FredPret wrote:
| That's horrible, I'm so sorry. I can't imagine a more
| discouraging turn of events
| buyx wrote:
| To add to your point: the roots of South Africa's energy crisis
| date back to the early 90s, when the apartheid government was
| finishing up. Until the late 1980s, the apartheid government
| were into central planning, price controls and other state
| interventions (like many other western governments of that
| era). They started deregulating and privatising in the late
| 80s, and had already started cutting infrastructure spending by
| the early 90s.
|
| Thus, throughout the 1970s and 1980s they actually massively
| overbuilt electricity generation infrastructure. In the early
| 90s, electrification programmes were being rolled out in black
| townships to soak up the excess capacity. Of course, this
| excess capacity came with an opportunity cost, as all central
| planning tends to do.
|
| With the advent of the ANC government the emphasis switched to
| paying off South Africa's national debt (which has largely been
| incurred by the apartheid government fighting proxy wars
| against the Soviet Union and Cuba).
|
| Finance minister Trevor Manuel and then-deputy president Thabo
| Mbeki, who pretty much ran South Africa from 1996 to 2008
| continued and expanded the early 90s austerity. The economy
| actually did well during this period and South Africa was
| widely lauded internationally for its fiscal responsibility,
| however infrastructure investment didn't keep up, as you point
| out, the public transport network (which the apartheid
| government misguidedly deregulated and handed to the free
| market in the form of the minibus taxi industry in the late
| 80s), the road network and other infrastructure started
| deteriorating and also failed to keep up.
|
| The ANC government attempted to restructure the electricity
| network in the early 2000s to bring it into line with
| developments in the rest of the world (creating a market for
| generation), but by this time Mbeki's AIDS denialism had cost
| him a lot of political capital with the left of his party
| (actually the trade union movement, COSATU in alliance with his
| party). The bottom line is that it was politically infeasible
| to restructure the electricity industry (the current government
| is trying again under duress). So without government build of
| new generation, and no private sector investment because of the
| stalled market reforms, demand eventually outstripped supply by
| 2007 (remember what I said about economic growth being
| relatively high in that era). Load shedding arrived in late
| 2007. It was actually a huge surprise when it started, and as
| you say, we were totally unprepared. The IT industry scrambled
| to install generators in offices.
|
| With the Soccer World Cup coming up in 2010, Eskom (the
| government body with a virtual monopoly on electricity supply
| and generation) ran its fleet hard, and also commissioned two
| mega coal power stations. Mbeki was replaced by 2009 with Jacob
| Zuma: Mbeki's arrogance and his insane AIDS policies having
| finally done him in. Zuma, was of course, not a technocrat like
| Mbeki, but embodied some of the worst traits of a politician.
|
| Load shedding actually faded into the background for much of
| the early 2010s, but by 2015 or so, load shedding returned, as
| that lack of maintenance because of an electricity fleet that
| was being run too hard caught up.
|
| The two mega coal power stations have been beset with issues as
| well.
|
| Eskom, despite recent efforts to clean it up, languished under
| a cloud of corruption and incompetence through the 2010s with
| politically connected incompetents gaining purchase throughout
| the state. Water woes kicked in by 2014, with large parts of
| high-altitude Gauteng province without water because the pumps
| that raised water from dam catchments failed (they were
| repaired but it was a sign of how badly things were being
| neglected). There are rumours that hangers on from Zuma's era
| are sabotaging Eskom from within...it's hard to be sure, but
| regardless, it was left in a sorry state.
|
| South Africa is a constitutional democracy with strong
| institutions...the fact that it managed to survive the Zuma era
| without collapsing is a testament to that. However, the ruling
| ANC is run under the Leninist precepts of Democratic Centralism
| and thus the president of the ANC has enormous power because of
| the electoral dominance of the party (you could look to China's
| CCP intrigues for an analogue).
|
| Even if Cyril Ramaphosa, the current president, and basically a
| good egg, manages to push through reforms, it may well be too
| late. The country could well be in a death spiral.
| zx76 wrote:
| Long comments like this often look like they're going to
| present a serious diatribe but this is actually a balanced
| take.
|
| The line "The two mega coal power stations have been beset
| with issues as well" even radically undersells just how much
| of a debacle these two power stations have been. They were
| supposed to be the 8th/9th biggest coal stations in the world
| & accurately sized to solve the pending shortages in time,
| the major contracts went to legitimate companies like Alstom,
| GE & Hitachi. They were supposed to take approx. 5 years from
| 2007 and cost a reasonable approx. R30 billion each.
|
| What's actually happened is that 15 years later neither is
| fully operational and the money spent has crossed 10x the
| original plans. The parts of the stations that currently do
| work are hamstrung by massive and debilitating design flaws
| that regularly cause trips or bigger issues (e.g. a smoke
| stack collapse last month) and there is no clear end for the
| construction in site even after all this time & money. And
| these aren't complex nuclear plants - these are just standard
| coal power stations. How to build them is quite well
| understood by now!
|
| It's a combination of sustained and massive corruption (every
| now and then the current administration finds a few extra
| billion to recoup from a corrupt contractor), poor original
| designs that have complicated every subsequent step in the
| waterfall chart and finally unfortunate incompetence (for
| instance one of the 6 units at Medupi was entirely blown up
| after hydrogen wasn't vented before maintenance. The entire
| generator room must now be replaced with new parts from
| France at the cost of multiple billions of rands and over a
| year and a half of additional delay).
|
| Finally, w.r.t. the reforms mention in parent comment's final
| line - I think they have a chance. South Africa has
| previously had a radically regulated energy sector. Basically
| you couldn't generate your own power, period. But due to the
| pressing political weight of the current situation there have
| been increasing steps away from the ideological commitment to
| exclusively state run coal powered grid. Large energy users
| and businesses can now do paperwork for approval to run their
| own multi-megawatt stations and basically every big factory,
| mine, mill etc. is now doing this to varying degrees. The big
| mining houses especially will spend a lot of money building
| their own infrastructure now. Between allowing the grid to
| buy private power (a lot of which is affordably priced
| renewable energy) and a lot of heavy demand starting to make
| its own power I think there's a fair chance things will
| stabilize in the next 2 years. The big question is electoral
| conferences and the next elections. If EFF wins meaningful
| electoral power there is a strong chance SA will go the route
| of Venezuela quicker than people think - and I say that as
| someone who is very committed to staying here and doesn't
| subscribe to most of the negative takes people can have about
| SA.
| cagenut wrote:
| One of the reasons renewables will have an easier time replacing
| fossil fuels than people who worry about intermittency/baseload
| think is that for most people, in most places, the grid simply
| isn't that reliable anyway. Cheaper and 'good enough' is a
| relative variable on both axis.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Very much so. Those who can afford it are going to go solar and
| batteries as soon as they can, and those who can't will be
| exposed to this low level of electrical service until solar and
| battery cost declines meet them at their socioeconomic level.
| The resulting system will be more resilient end state, but the
| process is going to suck to get there.
|
| The average house in South Africa uses 967 kWh of electricity
| per month. That's roughly a 5kw-6kw system, or 12-15 400W solar
| panels + inverters. Payback period at current prices is ~6-7
| years.
|
| https://www.myggsa.co.za/how-much-electricity-does-a-househo...
|
| https://www.handymanhomes.co.za/energy-saving/how-much-will-...
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > The average house in South Africa uses 967 kWh of
| electricity per month. That's roughly a 5kw-6kw system, or
| 12-15 solar panels + inverters.
|
| ... what? That's 11.000 kWh a year. Even in Germany, with
| water heating by electricity (which is rare because it's just
| so inefficient), homes _rarely_ hit 6.000 kWh.
|
| [1] https://www.energie.web.de/ratgeber/verbrauch/stromverbra
| uch...
| [deleted]
| Semaphor wrote:
| For a whole house that sounds reasonable? I'm at 4200 kWh a
| year with only 2 people in a 60 m2 apartment.
| Durchlauferhitzer, but still.
|
| The link you posted even mentions a range of 14,000 -
| 28,000 kWh for houses not built for efficiency.
| ununoctium87 wrote:
| Houses in South Africa are (on average) 1) bigger, and 2)
| poorly insulated.
|
| Also, way less efficient hot water cylinders
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| > _water heating by electricity [...] is rare because it 's
| just so inefficient_
|
| Entirely depends on the number of accommodation units per
| building, installation and ongoing maintenance cost of
| heaters and metering equipment, availability of gas and/or
| district heating, etc. It's certainly uneconomical to send
| heated water through expensive copper pipes in a building
| inhabited by only two singles when it's needed only for a
| shower in the morning, yet has to be kept running for
| hygienic reasons the remainder of the day.
| vt85 wrote:
| reuben364 wrote:
| As a South African, I have a engineer friend working for a
| company that does solar for places like retail complexes. They
| have a lot of business.
|
| Also there is a widely used app for load shedding timetables
| called "EskomSePush" which is a pun on "Eskom se poes" roughly
| translates to "Eskom's cunt" with poes being very vulgar and
| offensive.
| knaekhoved wrote:
| oblak wrote:
| This guy's history in this thread alone is crazy. Racist is an
| understatement
| n0tth3dro1ds wrote:
| jojobas wrote:
| The real question would be "what if he's right".
|
| Imagine there was an island discovered with some sort of
| transitional, Homo Erectus style people. Let's say they
| can't, for organic reasons, exceed IQ 50 - can speak, wildly
| efficient in hunting and foraging, can't figure out 3rd grade
| maths, can't learn letters, can't understand how seeds work.
|
| What would be a reasonable policy towards such people?
| pessimizer wrote:
| Simpatico with a lot of the other content in this thread, but
| more direct. At least he isn't talking about angry blacks
| with a chip on their shoulder rejecting the white wisdom of
| the west. All of the Idiocracy mentions aren't very far away
| from this guy in essence, though.
| userbinator wrote:
| It's unfortunate that people don't want to talk about the
| elephant in the room because it's too politically incorrect
| to.
| damagednoob wrote:
| Usually I like BBC's More or Less but their episode[1] on this
| situation really rubbed me the wrong way. They dismissed one
| elderly white couple's concerns with implied racism and didn't
| look at the trendline of per capita output from Eskom.
|
| Any South African currently living there is completely
| unsurprised by this latest news.
|
| [1]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07jm2zy
| lelanthran wrote:
| FTFA:
|
| > "If we continue to burn diesel the way we have for the past
| seven months, the cost would be astronomical. But we do not have
| the cash to spend. We would be able to pay if the *municipalities
| were paying us*,"
|
| That, right there, is a pretty big reason for the current
| blackouts: The masses refuse to pay, and the cost of keeping
| society afloat falls to a minority who cannot really be squeezed
| any further.
|
| Last I checked (2007), each taxpayer was supporting 4.3 people
| _other than their dependents or themselves_.
|
| It is not a sustainable situation, and the state should have been
| doing everything it could to encourage foreign investment.
| Instead, empowered by the voters, they repeatedly loot the
| coffers.
| herodoturtle wrote:
| > At the briefing last week, Eskom provided a statistical
| forecast of load shedding over the next 10 months. The forecast
| showed that until August 2023, SA would experience stage 3 load
| shedding on most days of the month, provided that diesel was
| burned to make up for the shortfall. The diesel required to keep
| the system at Stage 3 varied from R3 billion to more than R7
| billion a month. As burning this amount of diesel is physically
| and logistically impossible, the implication was that load
| shedding would in fact, be several stages above stage 4.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| It is wild what rampant corruption (that voters are willing to
| tolerate, possibly for tribal reasons) will do to a fairly
| educated nation with enormous natural riches.
| FredPret wrote:
| It's not just corruption. It's a rejection of the values of the
| Enlightenment (reason, evidence, progress, etc), because those
| ideas came from colonial powers.
|
| Those are also the ideas that work, whether they are applied in
| Europe or in Africa.
| whatshisface wrote:
| I don't think that African dictators are rejecting reason and
| evidence in the course of administrating their corruption,
| although they might reject evidence of corruption in public.
| FredPret wrote:
| The real problem is that most of the people there (black,
| white, and others) reject the mental frameworks that have
| been proven to work elsewhere, perhaps due to distrusting
| the West, or for whatever other reason.
|
| In my mind this mental framework features capitalism,
| democracy, and a style of thinking that emphasizes - or at
| least accommodates - kindness, openness, progress, thinking
| in nuances. Basically, humanism.
|
| From my experience there, some population groups will
| reject ideas they see as white, which includes capitalism
| (origin: probably Europe?) but not communism (origin:
| Germany!). Others, including white folks, might feel
| inclined to embrace those "white" ideas specifically, but
| will reject other parts of the Enlightenment framework.
| Many think problems should be solved by force instead of
| careful and nuanced consideration, which is seen as
| effeminate.
|
| Corruption is more of a symptom than a cause.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Some South African politicians are heavily into AIDS
| denial.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Using certain types of denial that western politicians
| have a history of as a reference, are they doing that
| because that's what the voters want to hear?
| zx76 wrote:
| Interestingly I wouldn't say it seemed so. AIDS
| devastated the political base of the politician in
| question and people who fought for the right to treatment
| were also politically popular. I think it may have just
| been a strange ideological bent in a specific set of
| political circle. Thankfully these ideas and policies
| have been pretty much entirely consigned to history now.
| The consequences were terrible though, nearly a million
| children were orphaned because of both parents dying of
| AIDS. I can't find a specific source to cite a specific
| number, they all reference much higher numbers across the
| whole Southern African region.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > I don't think that African dictators are rejecting reason
| and evidence in the course of administrating their
| corruption, although they might reject evidence of
| corruption in public.
|
| South Africa isn't a dictatorship, but the voters still
| vote along tribal lines, with a concerning minority
| (+-10%?) voting along race-hate lines.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| They worked beautifully in East Asia too.
|
| It was the other imports (Communism, Prussian-like
| militarism) that would be better discarded.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-11-20 23:01 UTC)