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I’m not an electrical engineer, nor am I a management expert, and this could all be baloney, but for what it’s worth, this is what I would do to fix Eskom. Toss my advice, accept it, whatever. Everybody in South Africa has had their 10c worth, and this is mine.
Step 1: Decide what the problem is
There are four possible options here: this is a management problem, a grid problem, a fleet problem or a planning problem.
To isolate this issue, it’s worth looking at what exactly happened over the past few weeks, and thanks to Kyle Cowan from News24 for breaking this down so nicely.
Eskom has a total installed capacity of 46GW; of that, 6GW are peaking power, so it’s not always available for the grid. About 7GW are out on planned maintenance. About 10GW dropped out of the system over the past few weeks, and 4GW were taken up with partial load losses, which is just inefficiency that results from the production drop mentioned above. In total, 21GW dropped out of the system — almost half of the capacity. So that leaves you with 25GW, of which 6GW comes and goes.
So far, so good. So what happened over these past few weeks? (Thanks again to Cowan for this explanation.) First, on Saturday, 3 September, Unit 2 of Koeberg had a problem with the control systems, which lowered the cooling rods (this is truly scary, so I’m not thinking about it) and about 1GW dropped out of the system. Over the next weeks, 44 subsequent trips took place at power stations around the country.
Two days later, one of the units at Kusile tripped, shortly followed by nearby Matimba. Both were quickly returned to service, but both tripped again. Now we move to the electricity heartland in Mpumalanga, where in the next few days there were problems at one unit at Arnot, which was quickly returned to service. But then nine units at different power stations tripped.
Some of these units were old power stations, like Kendal and Majuba. But there were trips at Medupi too; the new power station that was going to solve all our problems. Each of these units was restored within about 10 hours, but 33 units then tripped over the next few days. Eskom at this point had eaten up all its peaking power. Eskom personnel rushed to fix these problems, but it wasn’t enough.
If you look from the outside at this picture, what becomes vaguely clear is that Eskom does not appear to have a management or staffing problem. Why? All the issues were addressed quickly and staff were on to them.
If it’s not a staffing issue, then it means, in essence, Eskom has a fleet problem. Small issues on the grid quickly explode into a total fleet breakdown, presumably because each problem places extra strain on the fleet, which can’t handle the load.
The sequence does not openly suggest management or staff have been at fault; they are just trying to make a car go faster than it has the capacity to go. Of course, it would be nice if they fixed the problems properly, but given the widespread nature of the issue, I would hazard a guess that unit management at each station is not at fault. I could be wrong, but there wasn’t one big problem at one plant — it was all over the place.
There is of course an underlying planning problem; you don’t want to be in this position. But I’m talking to a Martian now, so all that history is water under the bridge. The solution here is clear, and that is step two.
Step 2: Add more capacity to the grid, and do it quickly
Now, of course, the government has been trying to do this, so what is the problem here?
The notional solution has been to get the private sector to add capacity as part of the REIPPP (Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Programme). This is what the government had plumped for as a solution. But REIPPP Window 5 was announced a year ago, and not a single one of the 13 winners has yet to put a single watt of electricity into the grid. Many haven’t even got to financial closure. It’s worth noting that mining companies that I have spoken to typically put these systems in place in four months, once the paperwork is done.
So we have a big problem here, and the problem is bureaucracy and agendas. At one point, you couldn’t get an offtake licence from the energy regulator, Nersa, without a wheeling agreement from Eskom (wheeling is the way of getting electricity on to the grid). But you couldn’t get a wheeling agreement from Eskom without an offtake licence from Nersa. I am not making this up. Apparently, this is fixed now, but, you know, WTF?!
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And then the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition put its oar into the works by demanding its little slice of the pie by requiring maximal local production, as it does with everything, whether SA produces the stuff or not. That was reduced, but not by enough. And then there is general incompetence and resistance at the Department of Mineral Resources.
Add to these problems that the bidding process happened before prices shot up because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — you know, the war that SA supports — and other issues. There was also Karpowership but, inevitably, corruption. Is there a solution here? Yes, there is, it’s step three.
Step 3: We could short-circuit all this bureaucracy if we just allow Eskom to build some emergency renewable power
Controversial? Possibly. But think about it.
Eskom, sadly, does not have a balance sheet on account of being, you know, bankrupt. But Eskom is at the moment spending about R15-billion a year on diesel to keep the system going. It now costs R6,500 for a 650W solar panel, which means this is a ridiculously easy calculation: the retail market price is now R10 a watt. Magic! Hey presto, 1.5GW of power! Effectively free, because you are diverting cash you are already spending.
Now, of course, the mega-power station lobby will object, because, they say, renewable energy is not baseload power. And the essence of their argument is — and I am not making this up — that solar panels don’t work at night on account of the fact that the sun goes down. Sadly, nobody in the solar industry ever thought of that (kidding). There are plenty of 2GW solar plants out there these days, and there are a gazillion ways to store power. They just want to build another big power plant because that’s what they know.
But why should Eskom do it? Didn’t Eskom bankrupt itself because it was unable to manage Medupi and Kusile? Yes, this is true, but since even I managed to wire up my house from the solar panels in my back garden, I think Eskom might just be capable of handling this kind of project. Eskom might not be the ideal manager, but it does have the enormous advantage of not having to ask itself whether it wants to buy electrical power from itself or not.
This might be all desperately naive; there may be much more complicated issues here. But, on the other hand, my three-step procedure took me an hour to write. The government has been dealing with this problem — or not dealing with it — for 15 years now; the least it could do is be absolutely crystal clear and honest about what the problem actually is, what they intend doing and when that will happen. Crystal clear, people. Please. DM/BM