RACHEL RICKARD STRAUS: We'd better invest in our energy infrastructure right now - I saw in South Africa what happens when the lights go out
There's a new app to which South Africans are addicted – and I pray it never makes its way over here.
Across the country, people are glued to the application they download on to their mobile phones that tells them when they will next be plunged into darkness.
Over the last couple of years South Africa has got itself a serious electricity problem. There simply isn't enough to go around.
To cope, the state electricity supplier Eskom simply cuts off people's supply periodically in a strategy called load shedding.
One neighbourhood is cut off for a couple of hours, then another, then another – so that the blackouts are spread across the country.
I experienced it last week and it seemed completely incongruous seeing something as chaotic as power cuts being forcedly woven into modern life.
In shopping malls there were signs outside some stores boasting that they do not close during load shedding – because others do have to shut their doors. In the cereal aisle beneath the Shreddies I spotted a sign advising shoppers to stock up for load shedding – because they won't be able to cook when the power goes out.
From my perspective, coming from a country where managing our future energy capacity will be a real issue to address over the next decade, it really felt like the ultimate cautionary tale in power management – a Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come for energy.
The UK government estimates we'll need £110billion of investment in our energy infrastructure in the coming years and, after a week in South Africa, let me tell you I hope we don't skimp.
These are blackouts in the modern age. They are not unplanned, and households can check when they are coming. The load shedding timetable is available on a mobile app so that people can check when their next blackout is on its way and plan around it as best they can. People check the timetable like the weather forecast - a risk of light showers and a chance of evening load shedding.
Even so, they cause chaos. Not always - some people report appreciating nice candlelit dinners at home and being surprised at just how much they enjoy conversations with their loved ones in the sudden absence of the television.
But for most, it can be infuriating suddenly to be without internet connection, or without an oven at 7pm when you're planning dinner, or without the means to heat a bottle when you want to feed your baby.
Sometimes it's very dangerous. Traffic lights go out, leaving drivers forced to improvise. In a country that already has safety issues, a sudden shut down of street lights is worrying.
Just imagine what it's doing to the economy – it's inconvenient for households to lose energy supply for a bit; for manufacturers it's crippling.
Manufacturing output fell by 2.4 per cent in the last quarter alone, caused in part by load shedding.
One estimate from South Africa's department of public enterprises puts the cost to the economy of electricity cuts at between $1.7billion and $6.8billion a month.
GDP growth has also fallen to a disappointing 1.3 per cent in the first three months of 2015, down from 4.1 per cent in the same quarter 2014.
Of course it's not just down to power cuts; the unemployment rate is at a terrifying 26.4 per cent – 50.3 per cent among 15-24 year olds – and agriculture is suffering from the effects of a recent, severe drought.
Destination: Cape Town is an extraordinary holiday destination - and at the moment the exchange rate makes it a great choice for Britons
But load shedding takes momentum out of everything, erodes confidence among investors and creates huge uncertainty.
It's not going away either. State-owned Eskom, which generates more than 95 per cent of the country's electricity, has been weakened by years of underinvestment and ageing infrastructure, as well as governance problems.
The issues are decades old and complicated. Last year President Jacob Zuma said South Africa's energy problems were a product of apartheid and the ANC had inherited a power utility from the previous regime that had only provided electricity to the white minority.
'The problem [is] the energy was structured racially to serve a particular race, not the majority,' Zuma told delegates at the Young Communist League's congress in Cape Town.
Twenty years into democracy, 11 million households had access to electricity, double the number in 1994, he added.
Power stations are being built, but won't be on line for a good few years. Investment in renewables is increasing, with investment in the first quarter of this year at $3.1billion from almost nothing a year earlier, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
However renewables still only meets about 15 per cent of energy needs. South Africa has also controversially bought eight nuclear power stations from Russia to the tune or $84billion – but they won't be online before 2023.
The effects on the economy and sentiment have also contributed to the declining value of the currency – the South African Rand. (Great, incidentally, for British tourists as the pound now goes a long way).
Even more frightening is the alternative to load shedding. Without it, the grid itself could collapse and take as long as a fortnight to fire up again. Imagine what would happen to a country with no electricity for a fortnight – no airports, traffic lights, alarm systems, refrigeration… I can see why they opt for the load shedding.
Britain is in a very different situation to South Africa. Thankfully we can attract the investment and the tax revenues to ensure our energy infrastructure works for us way into the future.
South Africa may have had insufficient investment in its energy supply, but it's had plenty of other things to invest in in the past 20 years - health, education, homes for huge segments of the previously marginalised population.
Nonetheless, when planning energy supply, it's worth looking at what the repercussions would be if we didn't plan sufficiently for the future.
Every year in this country National Grid estimates the worse-case scenario margins for our energy capacity and consumption. This winter spare capacity fell to just four per cent, the tightest level for seven years.
There's lots National Grid can do to tide us over; it pays energy companies to keep old power stations in reserve, and can pay businesses to cut their usage at peak times.
Even so, after witnessing load shedding, it seems very clear that we must go much further. We need solar panels on our roofs to reduce our dependency on the grid, we need well-insulated homes so we need less energy – and we need to invest in our infrastructure now or face stockpiling Shreddies ten years down the line.
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Source:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/bills/article-3109580/RACHEL-RICKARD-STRAUS-Load-shedding-South-Africa-disastrous-invest-energy-infrastructure.html
