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Have we had a discussion on South Africa yet?
Recently, Andre de Ruyter, the now-ex CEO of the state owned power provider ESKOM, did an interview that basically said the corruption and everything was so bad that he and ESKOM cannot do their jobs properly. He himself was a target of assassination (cyanide pill in his coffee or something?), and after the interview has been removed from his post (he put in his resignation before the interview). He has since left the country.
There are many reports that the grid can totally collapse soon, despite the "load shedding" that they have been doing. Apparently this may lead to civil war?
Unemployment is apparently 35%, clean water access and supply is apparently unstable. Crime is apparently extremely high. If you go on /r/southAfrica, there are frequent discussions of home invasion and other crimes (70 carjackings a day, 2500 home invasions a day...). One post I saw last week was a question asking "Dogs been poisoned, both dead. Typically how many days before robbery hit?"
See this recent thread for more issues: https://twitter.com/k9_reaper/status/1630436052723720193
Some blame this all on the ruling ANC party, on their policies like BBBEE (from a few years ago: https://www.revolver.news/2021/07/south-africa-riots-looting-critical-race-theory/).
In general, SA's situation is not looking good...
Many people are getting killed in a war, many people are getting killed in a failing African state, both rates are massively contingent on factors that have little to do with severity of relative dysfunction... Comparisons with Ukraine are frustrating because they miss the truly expository part.
Starting on 10th of October 2022 (afaik), Russia has begun a campaign of missile and drone attacks on objects of Ukrainian power grid, from thermal power plants to high-power transformers, forcing local authorities to initiate rationing: industrial entities and the general public were told to limit their consumption. On 11th Oct, Ukraine (normally benefitting from Soviet-era nuclear power plants) has ceased exporting power to EU. Entire regions engaged in what Africans call «load shedding»; phased blackouts were also practiced.
This kept going on for months, with a salvo roughly once a week, as winter was setting in; and sarcastic mockery of Russian efforts gave way to rage, then to dread. In late November, the westernmost Lviv couldn't keep traffic lights and even air raid alarms on – forget amenities like water and heating and public transportation. I've seen irritated Ukrainians lash out at each other in bursts of internet activity, because they felt actual terror in their freezing, disconnected homes, or because a local civil servant has lights in his windows. At some point, virtually all of Kiev turned dark and cold, with non-functioning sewers and most of other infrastructure. You have to understand: Kiev is not some poor bumfuck nowhere from a Borat sketch, it's not even Chișinău – it's «the mother of Russian cities», a beautiful, three-million-strong, properly European, modern megapolis with fifteen centuries of history and Teslas on streets. Not only did Russia push the entire country onto the cusp of indeed being a premodern shithole, but this strategy had exhausted the pool of spare transformer parts across Europe. All this was on top of near-obliterated economy the remains of which serve the war machine, many cities leveled by artillery fire, millions of internal refugees, significant territories (with the biggest nuclear power plant in Europe among other things) occupied, and a range of other maladies.
Everyone who could, procured diesel generators – but you can't really cover a lot with diesels when a country between the size of Texas and France (or exactly like France, if we subtract the the occupied portion) loses its reliable centralized grid virtually overnight (Soviet utilities are actually quite solid so people feel safe to not prepare for them failing); and besides, Russia went after fuel depots as well; and many generators were dedicated to army needs. I did not follow it at all intently, so I am not sure if there are all that many Ukrainians who didn't have to deal with power cuts for at least a few hours almost every day for months – pessimistically for 15+ hours a day; at least no such people are known to me. A friend of mine went through building UPS units from LiFePO4 or lead-based car batteries, with my minor input; others were fiddling with candles and such; it was a whole thing, you know.
Enough – I've probably made a few mistakes already. My point is this: Ukrainian power grid was chosen as a target of priority by a belligerent wannabe superpower (such as there is), and to a large extent taken out of commission. They have fixed it by now, whereas Russia has apparently exhausted its drone and missile supply. They aren't cold, they do not have rolling blackouts and load shedding, I gather there still exist state requests to limit consumption, but – it's basically back to business as usual.
Infrastructure-wise, what is happening to South Africa as a result of its post-Apartheid politics is what Russia had failed to do to Ukraine via a full-scale war. Induced collapse of a complex society, its shattering into pockets of desperation and day-to-day survival. The country is being destroyed and reduced to the state of terminal barbarism. And unlike the case of the war, nobody will be called an Orc or held accountable here. «There is a great deal of ruin in a nation». Oh well. Shit happens.
Has your friend posted anything about his battery setup? Building one now, can always use more info about things that did or didn't work. Especially grid and generator charging.
I think you'll find it easy to design a better scheme without constraints of the Ukrainian situation. The most interesting component he ended up using was probably this but he's a bit too busy with AFU-related stuff to report on details now.
Thanks, that sounds like he was working on a serious power system: enough to keep a Heroes 3 PC running 24/7.
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