"This is a big crisis, a really big crisis." This is the grim assessment of the City Council's public lighting manager as Cape Town once again awoke to darkness and chaos this morning.
Just four days after the misery of the week-long power cuts ended, Koeberg's Unit 2 has gone down again - and another week of power cuts misery is on the cards.
Early on Tuesday it was back to traffic chaos, erratic rail service, endless taxi queues and an abrupt halt to industrial production.
The latest Koeberg KO blow was attributed to a voltage drop along the main Eskom lines through the Karoo in the early hours.
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| It was back to traffic chaos, erratic rail service, endless taxi queues |
"It was unclear whether, as it did last time, it would take another five days to get Unit 2 up and running again," Eskom's Tony Stott said.
Last week, it was the restart procedure that caused the week-long load-shedding problems, as Koeberg's technicians went through the lengthy and mandatory drill to restart the generator.
"The duration of the process depended on the temperatures in the power station at which the restart procedure was started," Stott said.
"If the restart procedure starts when temperatures are fairly high, it might take less time to get Koeberg back up and running.
"But we are waiting for that information right now."
| 'Eskom is going to have to do a lot of creative tap dancing' |
Charles Kadalie, manager of Cape Town's public lighting, said the main Eskom line between Droërivier and Muldersvlei went down shortly after 2am, causing a voltage depression and frequency drop that forced staff at Koeberg to shut down the nuclear power station's only working generator.
"Eskom shed out main intake at Montague Gardens and this caused even the central business district to go down," Kadalie said.
"The Atlantic seaboard had also gone off. Last week, we had an agreement with them that they would not shed the main intake, so I don't know why they did.
"This is a big crisis, a really big crisis.
"Eskom is going to have to do a lot of creative tap dancing to get around this one."
Kadalie said there was no alternative but to shed load, or the entire Western Cape could go down.
The city would try to implement the load schedule drawn up for last Friday, which was not brought into effect because Koeberg came fully back on line that day.
Koeberg's Unit 1 has been out of commission since Christmas Day and it is not clear how long the repairs will take.
There is concern that further black-outs could endanger Wednesday's local government elections, but a spokesperson for the IEC said voting and vote-counting could take place by lamplight and candlelight.
Voters' details would be captured by battery-powered, hand-held Zip-Zap computers.
Meanwhile, commuters at railways stations around the metropolitan area were left stranded on Tuesday as trains failed to arrive.
Services were expected to be sporadic at best, because the power supply was very unstable, said spokesperson Riana Scott.
"And even when the trains can run, the signals still depend on municipal supply," she said.
"It will therefore be impossible for us to run to schedule. Safety definitely comes first."
Thousands of commuters turned to taxis and long queues were seen at ranks around the city.
Traffic officers were sent to key intersections but many motorists reported nightmare journeys to work.
A motorist from Milnerton said he had set out by car but as the traffic was "at walking pace", he had turned around, gone home and fetched his motorbike.
Ridwan Wagiet, director of CCTV and radio communications for the Metro police department, said: "I think most people got into work, although some would have been very late."
He said that each time there was a power cut traffic officers were now being automatically sent to help at the major intersections.
He said there had been no reports of serious accidents.
henrid@incape.co.za
- This article was originally published on page 1 of Cape Argus on February 28, 2006
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