The South Africans will likely have to deal with stages two and three of load shedding over the next two years to allow Eskom to carry out maintenance on its power generating units, the utility’s president, Mpho Makwana, said on Sunday.
The country is enduring its worst spell of load shedding since Eskom introduced rolling blackouts more than 15 years ago, with some areas without power for up to 10 total hours a day at stage six. Eskom says the power cuts are necessary to avoid a total grid collapse, as its aging and poorly maintained units struggle to generate enough electricity to meet demand.
At Eskom’s management team’s press conference on the energy crisis, Makwana said teams were working hard at power plants to improve unit reliability.
He acknowledged that taking the country from one stage of load shedding to another in a short space of time was not good, but said this was necessary to execute a recovery plan “while giving the country a level of consistency to plan around to their livelihoods.” .
In a statement also issued Sunday, Eskom said the October 2022 failure of the stack system at its Kusile power plant, which knocked out more than 2,000 megawatts of capacity, was the main cause of recent elevated load shedding stages. . This, together with the planned prolonged outage of unit one of the Koeberg nuclear power plant, was responsible for three stages of load shedding.
“We are working urgently to resolve generation capacity constraints and reduce load shedding as soon as possible,” Eskom said. “However, the reality is that solving the problems affecting the performance of the coal generation fleet will take longer than South Africa wants and needs.”
The company reiterated that it was dealing with deep structural and maintenance problems on the aging fleet of generators, which are, on average, 45 years old this year, just five years out of the typical 50-year operating life of a power plant.
“In this context, Eskom reiterates that the only way to end load shedding is to add additional capacity. The shortfall is currently estimated at 4,000 MW to 6,000 MW of generation capacity. This supply shortfall can only increase as the current fleet grows in years and its performance continues to deteriorate,” the utility warned.
During the press conference, Makwana said that the key levers for the successful recovery of Eskom’s generating fleet “is the solution of the systemic problems that concern the organization, such as leadership, organizational culture and poor internal controls necessary to operate an organization. These will be integrated as part of the recovery plan.”
He said making sure the stations at Kendal, Matla, Majuba, Duvha, Tutuka and Kusile were reliable and getting an additional unit up and running at Kusile would halt load reduction within two years.
“We also need to protect and guard the best performing power plants like Matimba, Medupi [and] Lethabo so that they do not deteriorate,” he added.
Outgoing Eskom chief executive Andre de Ruyter, who resigned in December but will remain in the role until March 31, said that as winter approached, the utility would reduce its planned maintenance, according to his practice of scheduling more maintenance during the summer months when demand is lower.
But De Ruyter warned that the system’s capacity will likely remain constrained and supply limited for the remainder of the year.
On a positive note, he said there was an estimated 9,200MW of integrated generation projects in the pipeline. “When these projects are added to the grid, they are expected to start feeding the grid later this year. We will see a significant difference in the supply situation.”
De Ruyter noted that there has been speculation about increasing the load reduction to stage eight, saying the possibility of that was diminishing, but there was still an inherent risk.
He pleaded with consumers to pay for their electricity to help ease Eskom’s financial constraints. “Liquidity remains a key issue with municipal debt now approaching R57 billion.
“If we don’t get paid for the electricity we provide, of course we are compromised from a position to carry out the planned maintenance, to buy the raw materials and diesel we need to keep the lights on. So paying your bill is an extremely important role that you as an individual can play in enabling us to move past burden reduction.”
In its statement, Eskom said it would implement stage three load shedding from Sunday afternoon until 5am Monday.
“Stage two load shedding will be implemented during the day from 5 am to 4 pm, after which stage one load shedding will be implemented daily. On Monday afternoon, the load shedding of the fourth stage will be implemented from 4:00 pm to 5:00 am. The night load shedding will be reduced to stage three starting Tuesday until further notice.
Six generating units were anticipated to return to service during the week, allowing Eskom to maintain load shedding in the lower stages, but the utility’s statement warned that there was considerable risk to this prospect, because the system it was unreliable and unpredictable.
