Imagine the following: You are on the operating table as surgeons perform a delicate procedure on the artery supplying blood to your brain, when, without warning, the lights go out. For 10 terrifying minutes you wait – fully conscious, as you have been throughout the operation – as computerized medical equipment re-starts, using power from an emergency generator.

Sounds crazy, doesn't it? This happened to Michael Bevan, a 69-year-old retired mine manager, who was having a stent inserted in his carotid artery at a South African hospital when it was hit by a power cut. Eskom, the state-owned electricity company, has implemented a series of rolling power cuts – euphemistically known as "load-shedding" – and South Africans are beginning to feel the effects.

Mr. Bevan is lucky to be alive.

Since the latter months of 2007, South Africa has suffered from a severe shortage of electricity. To ensure stable output, electricity generation systems need a significant – perhaps 15% – margin of supply over demand. South African industry and consumers reportedly use 36,000 megawatts of electricity a day, while Eskom's daily capacity is just 9% above this.

Experts have been warning the government for a decade that South Africa was heading for a massive power shortage, but Eskom's requests for budget to build new stations were denied due to the South African government's attempted privatization of the utility in the late 1990s. Delayed investment plans mean the country is not expected to be back in a comfortable surplus position until 2012. In other words, for the next four years South Africans will spend a few hours every day without electricity. They have the government to thank for that.

In the meantime, Eskom is proposing big reductions in power use by consumers and industry. A figure of 10% is reportedly under discussion with mining companies, including the most exposed multinationals; Anglo American and BHP Billiton. The mining industry has not yet quantified the impact of such a cut. But if production, for example, fell by 5%-10% this year, Standard & Poor's estimates that 1 to 2 percentage points would be shaved off economic growth. Investment Solutions chief economist Chris Hart said that the power failures could slash South Africa’s economic growth to below 3.0% this year, which would be the lowest level since the advent of democracy in 1994.

In a desperate attempt to dissolve the crisis, Eskom has launched an incentive program to encourage South Africans to use solar energy to power their household needs.

There is an obvious, but important observation to be made here: Traditional sources of energy tend to be centralized. Whoever owns the resource (eg. Eskom, OPEC etc.), has the power to influence the lives of others. Alternative energy sources, like solar and wind, are decentralized. The sun shines everywhere and the wind blows everywhere. Decentralized energy enables people to generate their own electricity and gives them more power over their own lives.

I am proud to be a South African and the "load-shedding" problem angers me. I am too young to remember the dark days of Apartheid, but I can remember the day when Nelson Mandela was released from prison. At the time there was a real sense of excitement about the possibilities of a democratic future. Unfortunately, failure of a centralized energy system is now undermining the health of my country's young democracy.

For now, all I can do is dream of capitalism and democracy evolving in a world being fueled by decentralized energy. 

Photo:Bruno D Rodrigues, Creative Commons, Flickr