[Zsd-news] Cape Town Power Blackouts

[Ian Forbes]

Hi All

As we all know by now, Cape Town has a serious power crisis.

Despite all that Eskom and the politicians have said, or rather, have
not said, the problem has been on the horizon for some time. Three
factors, the extent of the power failures when both units at Koeberg
were off line during November last year, the "bolt in the generator"
failure in Koeberg Unit 1, and the requirement to refuel the remaining
Unit 2 at Koeberg, have made a period of rolling blackouts of up to 2
months highly probable.

Eskom has stated publicly that Koeberg Unit 2 has fuel to run at best
until the end of April. There has been no word of how long it will take
to repair unit 1, but if there was any chance of good news I am sure we
would have heard it already.

A quick look at the calendar, shows the least disruptive window period
for the refuelling of Koeberg unit 2, to be after yesterday's election
but before the Cape winter sets in. There are also 5 public holidays
during this period which will further reduce power demand on those days.

However the power cuts of the last three weeks caught me (and I expect
Eskom and the politicians too) a bit off guard. The truth is, these have
been just a dress rehearsal for what is to come.

ZSD has already taken a number of steps in anticipation of these
problems, including the installation of a new standby generator in early
February and the configuration of a standby server in the USA. These
steps have helped ZSD keep our services running with relatively small
disruption during the past 3 weeks.

However, number and duration of power cuts during the rolling blackouts
has proven to be more than we anticipated. This coupled with inaccurate
information from Eskom and the City Council has been challenging. Our
emergency power is designed for emergencies, not for running extended
periods on a daily basis. The strain on equipment and manpower has been
significant and direct costs, like fuel, mount up quickly.

Thus if the future brings numerous, extended power outages, we will
focus on keeping our services running during business hours. If the
failures occur overnight on a regular basis, we may not be able keep
running through the night.


Keeping the above scenario in mind, there are some issues which will
have a direct effect on our users:

- Our "Capetonian" dial-up accounts are serviced by old technology that
has been running for nearly 10 years. This equipment does provide a
simple cost effective solution for many who require dial-up access.
However we are not able to move this equipment onto our new emergency
supply. Thus we cannot keep the Capetonian service running during power
failures. As an alternative, we can upgrade "Capetonian" accounts to
"Roadrunner" accounts which dial directly into Telkom and are less
susceptible to power problems.

- We have always had a policy of hosting e-mail as close as possible to
the end user. Thus our e-mail servers are all located in Cape Town,
close to the majority of our customers. During the up-coming period,
there may well be a requirement to move some services offshore, beyond
Eskom's supply grid. ZSD has a server on standby in the USA for this
purpose. If there are users who would like to pre-empt the problems and
move their e-mail to offshore hosting, please contact ZSD. Please note
the following limitations will apply:

1) We must move your entire domain's e-mail. Ie all addresses of format
"user at yourcomany.co.za" must be moved simultaneously.

2) You may experience a performance degradation while downloading e-mail
over international links.

3) A lead time of about 7 days is required to perform the move if
disruptions are to be minimized.

4) Nevertheless some disruption may still occur during the change over.

The upside is, if you can get a fully working Internet connection, you
know that your mail will be available for download.

We may decide to move all of our mail hosting, including addresses of
the format <user>@zsd.co.za off-shore but this is a decision that will
be made at a later stage, depending on how the situation develops.


ZSD has a policy of moving with the market. We aim to be flexible to
meet our customers requirements. Clearly the next quarter may bring a
new set of challenges from an unexpected source. But we are already
investing time, money and resources to be one step ahead.


Regards


Ian Forbes