Energy crisis: Citizens in panic mode over potential grid collapse

Despite reassurances from experts about the electricity grid not collapsing, unverified documents making the rounds on social media about emergency plans to survive during a nationwide blackout are sending South Africans into a frenzy, which could potentially provoke a panic and lead to another crisis.

Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema ranted about the country experiencing a total grid collapse within the next fortnight.

Now, different experts have weighed in on documents similar to the “Emergency plan: 2 weeks [or more] without Eskom”, claiming to be from the City of Cape Town and giving advice “in the unlikely event Eskom fails to supply power for two weeks or more”.

READ MORE: Malema’s doomsday prediction: Is SA on brink of total grid collapse?

Scaremongering

Energy Comms coordinator Chris Vick said it was unfortunate to see the same faceless scaremongering as seen during the Covid crisis.

“We need to focus on what we can all do to keep the power grid stable, by lowering personal consumption rather than using the energy crisis as a lever to create fear and panic,” he said.

“Whoever dreamt up this misplaced misinformation should at least have the courage to put their name/s on it so their information can be tested and challenged.”

Vick said it was disingenuous and dangerous to cite “official sources” and misrepresent what they actually intended and meant. “We would encourage people to be cautious and sceptical about this sort of document and to act responsibly – the last thing we need is panic and a situation where people stockpile essential products as if the end of the world is nigh,” he said.

Solutions

Political analyst Dr Ntsikelelo Breakfast said people were desperately looking for solutions to the electricity crisis and were turning to the wrong places, because they did not trust the government.

He said, while it cannot be confirmed, this could also be tactic to destabilise the government. “The issue of power outages poses a threat to the economic performance of the country and national security,” he said.

“We’ve seen a lot of people lose their jobs and even small businesses bear the brunt of load shedding. “So it makes sense everyone is trying to find a solution and backup. So, the recent turn of events with outages has just escalated things and made it worse.”

In parliament this month, President Cyril Ramaphosa said load shedding was essential in preventing a total blackout. “We continue to look at various options and scenarios and obviously when those events eventuate and are near to eventuating, indeed the people of South Africa will be the first to know.”

He said reforms in the energy sector would see greater investment in generation and a lot of work was being done, despite rampant power cuts.

Trust lost

Psychologist Lindiwe Sibiya said the ruling party had failed to restore trust which, coupled with the lack of transparency from the power utility, was the reason why people fell for fake news.

“Poor truth discernment is linked to a lack of careful reasoning and relevant knowledge, as well as to the use of familiarity and source heuristics,” Sibiya said.

Meanwhile independent energy analyst Lungile Mashele said South Africans had nothing to worry about, looking at the transmission maintenance in the 2022 financial year, which was above 95%, “if you also look at the system operator”.

“South Africa has one of the most qualified system operators, with more than 15 years’ experience in managing the supply and demand deficit and having to implement load shedding, particularly at short notice. “We also have some of the best protocols in the world in terms of system operations,” she said.

If a complete blackout were to occur, it would be catastrophic. “If you look at the tools available to the system operator, they have what we call ancillary services, which are available within seconds if there’s a supply and demand mismatch affecting the frequency of voltage stability.

“They also have a reserve margin of a couple of thousand megawatts they can also use. “They would then go into load curtailment of their large customers.

They can certainly call their energy-intensive users and ask them to reduce demand immediately,” she said.

“The last measure is load shedding, which is already implemented daily. So the risk of a blackout is minimal and not a likely event.”

ALSO READ: Measures are in place to avoid grid collapse, says Eskom on Malema’s doomsday prediction

– reitumetsem@citizen.co.za