I think that, by any measure, I am an energy expert. I have been a senior engineer in Eskom operations (Eastern Cape). I have worked for a number of years in the petrochemicals field. I have designed three power stations (small ones, less than 5 MW), and I have designed a 500 MW solar power station (it never got built).

I know the names of all the Eskom major substations and power stations and I can sketch the Eskom 400 kV and 762 kV transmission systems. But I have also failed miserably. I am never asked by 567 Cape Talk radio to give an opinion on the power system or the state of energy generation in South Africa. News24 does not publish my opinion on these matters because they never ask. All the media houses give me the brush-off. Which is just fine by me.

What is not fine is the arrant rubbish that is published and is attributed to self-appointed ‘energy experts’. Let’s look at a few of these samples from the media: “Xxx (energy expert) said the question also needed to be asked over how long it would take to recover from a complete blackout. This would depend entirely on the amount of damage the grid had suffered due to the trip. If there is minimal damage, Eskom can probably bring the grid up within two weeks. If it’s severe damage, you are talking about ten years, or never.”

Well, wow! I think I’ll go and hide. But instead I will quote John McEnroe (the tennis player), who, when a line judge called a ball out, would shout: “You can’t be $@#^ serious!” Yes, you can’t be serious. Can anybody really believe that the only plan of Eskom operations’ staff at Simmerpan to recover the grid after a total blackout is to hope it doesn’t happen? Even more, how on Earth will a total blackout happen?

Okay, overloading and system faults. Cascading faults. Cascading overloads. But the Eskom protection systems are set up so that, if a risk occurs, a block of load is separated from the grid with a block of generation. So, that won’t be a blackout. It so happened that back in the day in, I think, 1972, Eskom did have a total blackout. It took three days to get the system back together and, note well, this was before cellphone and remote control – the whole exercise was done using only two-way radios and telephones.

“Xxx (energy expert) confirmed that a combination of wind power, solar power and battery backup could supply the whole Eskom power system . . .” “Oh, wow! Let’s keep it simple. On windless nights, we’ll be using battery backup, right? And, since the system load at night is about 14 000 MW, we’ll have 14 000 MW of batteries, huh? Now, the big Tesla battery in Australia cost $66-million and is rated at 100 MW/129 MWh, which means it produces 129 MW for one hour. So, assuming battery costs are sort of proportional, we can spend $66-million x 140, which equals $9.24-billion, or R138-billion, for about two hours’ power? What can I say? John McEnroe again.

Then, naturally, it’s not only the experts who get it wrong, it is the media reports. Some gems are: “South Africa has about 14 000 MW generation capacity, but 45% of this is not available for service for a number of different reasons” (from eNCA). Whoops! Make that 48 000 MW actually. “One of Koeberg’s units is down, and taking 100 MW out of service” (eNCA again). Goodness me! And there I thought each Koeberg unit was rated at 930 MW. And finally: “RF power harvesting is a process whereby radio- frequency energy emitted by sources that generate high electromagnetic fields such as TV signals, wireless radio networks and cellphone towers, but through power generating circuit linked to a receiving antenna, captured and converted into usable dc voltage.” (arXiv). Well, since a powerful radio transmitter would be about 5 kW, how much power would you get, actually? Answer, very little. It’s complete rubbish.