POWER CRISIS
Brace for another six to 12 months of rolling blackouts, warns Eskom
South Africans are in for a dim festive season. Eskom has announced that ‘protracted load shedding’ will continue for ‘six to 12 months’, as major repairs and capital investment projects are set to reduce already constrained generation capacity.
“Due to the vulnerability and unpredictability of the power system, coupled with the major capital projects, maintenance and major repairs to be executed starting during the next few months, the risk of continued load shedding remains quite high,” Eskom’s group chief operating officer, Jan Oberholzer, said on Tuesday.
In a statement, the power utility said these plans would remove 2,300MW of generation capacity from the ailing power grid, and further increase the implementation of rolling blackouts.
“Eskom cautions the public to anticipate the increased risk of load shedding until these problems are resolved over the next six to 12 months.”
In an Eskom state-of-the-system briefing on Tuesday afternoon, Oberholzer said a unit at Koeberg power station would undergo maintenance and refuelling from 8 December until June next year.
“Unit 1 of the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station, which has enjoyed 384 days of uninterrupted supply until today, will be shut down for normal maintenance and refuelling, and the replacement of the three steam generators as part of the long-term operation to extend the operating life of Africa’s only nuclear power station.”
This will remove 920MW of generation capacity from the national grid.
Read more in Daily Maverick: “The cold, hard facts — there’s no quick fix, and the power crisis is likely to get worse“
Poor generation
Oberholzer said the power utility had generally good performance in the network side of its business, encompassing transmission and distribution. However, there is still unsatisfactory performance on the generation side — particularly its coal fleet.
Eskom’s year-to-date energy availability factor (EAF), which is the proportion of its plant available to dispatch energy, is at 58.53% — below its target of 65% for the financial year. High levels of planned maintenance, combined with a high rate of breakdowns, had contributed to the low EAF, said Oberholzer.
He said that this year there had been 468 unplanned automatic grid separation trips — which is when a unit’s safety mechanisms cut it off from the grid to prevent instability. The target had been 392 trips.
“We really need to get [a handle] on this unreliability and unpredictability of some of the units at some power stations,” he said. Another “area that needs attention” is Eskom’s partial load losses, which are at 5,930MW — above the tolerance level, which the power utility set at 3,695MW.
Another problem: “Vandalism and theft are beginning to play a significant part in the challenges that Eskom has on the electrical network.”
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‘We do not have money to burn diesel’
Open cycle gas turbines (OCGTs), which are used during failures in the power fleet to limit the stages of power cuts, require diesel to run. Because of the system constraints, Eskom has been forced to use more than the anticipated levels of diesel to run its OCGTs.
“In order to supply the demand of the country, we have to run our open cycle gas turbines extensively,” said Oberholzer.
As at 31 October, the power utility had spent in excess of R12-billion — more than it had budgeted for — on diesel to run its OCGTs. Oberholzer warned that if Eskom were to stop running its OCGTs because of its financial challenges, the stages of load shedding would increase.
Read more in Daily Maverick: “Choose the right-size gas geyser to save on electricity and money”
Eskom’s initial budget for this financial year using diesel was R6.1-billion, said Oberholzer. “We then had the revised provision of R11.1-billion. Now, the R11.1-billion has been exceeded as well.
“We do not have money to burn diesel any more. We will be forced to implement load shedding because we do not have the money to burn the diesel at the rate that we have been doing until now.”
Oberholzer said municipal debt to Eskom remained a challenge. At the end of July, Daily Maverick reported that municipal debt to the power utility stood at R49.7-billion. As at 31 October, Eskom has “outstanding debt exceeding R52-billion”, Oberholzer said.
Head of generation resigns
Oberholzer also announced the resignation of Eskom’s acting head of generation, Rhulani Mathebula, who leaves at the end of November. Mathebula’s resignation comes six months after his appointment to the position, following the resignation of his predecessor, Phillip Dukashe, in May this year, due to stress.
Oberholzer said that in tendering his resignation, Mathebula had stated that the demands of the role had become “unbearable”, citing the negative impact it had on his health and family time.
The manager of Lethabo Power Station, Thomas Conradie, will act as generation executive while the replacement process is under way. DM
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Just make Conradie permanent please. If he were black he would be a shoe in for the job
Indeed.
Municipal debt
Sabotage
Theft
All problems which the government needs to control
And the masses still vote ANC
I can’t read anymore these senseless remarks “and the masses still vote ANC”. We all know that part of the problem is lack of education. What have YOU done to enlighten the masses so that they might see things from different perspectives?
I’m not saying that as individuals in civil society we don’t play a part in uplifting and contributing to said society. . .I am saying that the ANC has aaaaaaaallllllll the power, and has had al the power for a generation now.
Yes, individuals must contribute, but let’s not shift blame here. The blame all lies firmly at the ANC’s doorstep.
“We all know that part of the problem is lack of education.”
I disagree. The problem is old voters who are still loyal because the ANC freed them from Apartheid. It’s akin to being trapped in an abusive relationship because at one point your partner was a good person, except in this case it’s a political party.
I am not so sure that it is only education which is the problem. Part of it is that there is really no alternative. I know that the DA thinks they are, but they are not. They are good at service delivery, but government is about more than service delivery. Eventually the government must not just represent its’ supporters, but ALL South Africans, in other words there must be an understanding of the culture and other thinking of those who did not vote for them. In that department the DA falls woefully short. And besides, to keep SA going, the government must also have an understanding of SA’s place in the international world and what is needed to sustain us in this regard. I am not convinced that the DA has that capacity – or any other political party in SA for that matter. In today’s world this last part is the most important of all because of the interconnectedness of todays modern world. A national leader must thus transcend his/her own ideological preferences in order to play a uniting role so to preserve peace, firstly inside SA, but also towards SA worldwide. It has to be kept in mind that the man in the street does not relate to politics an government with rational argument, but with sentiment (not only in SA, but worldwide). So we direly need an alternative – and the DA has also been playing a negative role in this regard by stifling their competition in the opposition side.
No, they don’t vote which is a huge problem As is sabotage and theft.
The headline is concerning. We have seen years of loadshedding and we have not seen a clear plan out of the situation to keep the power on and grow the economy again. Should one believe that in 6 months time we are out of loadshedding – we will be doing nothing proactive just to be disappointed again. The reality appears to be that we will have worse loadshedding for the next 6 months, but as much as we wish the Eskom team well in trying to fix a bad situation, it would be naïve to thing it is all over by winter 2023.
I sympathise with the people trying to put a thumb in the Eskom dyke, but if 12 years ago we had been told that loadshedding was here to stay, we’d be better off today. Also, why are buildings lit up at all hours? Why aren’t malls installing solar panels to reduce the load? We need doable solutions because load shedding will be here for years to come.
What will change in 6 to 12 months? The poor policy (do not disconnect non-payers), gross incompetence merged with apparent willful sabotage of badly designed and built plants is going nowhere. Free advice : make a plan for self-provisioning because this circus is not going to change its clowns!!!
I think it would be more realistic to prepare for another 6 to 12 YEARS of load shedding.
I understand that a big part of that is the one unit at Koeberg that needs maintenance and refuelling, as the article says. And to solve the issue of crime and cable theft – and also, in due course the converting of Komati power station to a renewable energy plant will also bear fruit sometime in the future.
It’s worth mentioning (and we need to keep on mentioning it!) that we are here overwhelmingly because of the ANCs corruption, cadre deployment and ineptitude. It is very very likely that theft and vandalism are just another facet of what the ANCs policies have caused long term over years of corruption and rent seeking.
Well at least we have a timeline, sort of. I really feel sorry for management who have to fix what should have been done years ago and they have to contend with corrruption, sabotage, no payment (but we demand … ) and politics. If Cyril has done one thing right it is sticking with De Ruyter and his management. Batohi, unfortunately, was not such a good choice but then we still have Cele, Sisulu, Mahlobe, Fikile etc the list is endless.
“We really need to get [a handle] on this unreliability and unpredictability of some of the units at some power stations,”-and “We do not have money to burn diesel any more. We will be forced to implement load shedding because we do not have the money to burn the diesel at the rate that we have been doing until now.d” (The OCGT’s were only ever intended as peak-lopping stations-are incredibly expensive to fuel and need load/hours-based maintenance)
Talk about the bleeding obvious!
When-and only when- Eskom and the government start to take the situation seriously will the correct solutions be implemented. We all know what those are but they are nowhere near.
Hiding behind ideology is costing the nation its last chance to turn this situation around.
Sad to say but perhaps a total collapse of the system-rather than this slow poison-might actually focus minds!
The reality is while the ANC is in power we won’t see an end to this mess.
Eskom needed to do some planned maintenance and/or replacement in the area I live in and gave us 3 weeks notice of a 06h00 to 18h00 outage for today. What they didn’t tell us was that we would also have the load shedding schedule laid over that, so we had 04h00-06h30 and we have 20h00-22h30 planned fro this evening-that 161/2 h in one 24h period! A large area was affected, so I think that some sort of coordination would have been nice. It cannot work like this and I must leave the grid. The cost does not matter anymore, it is survival.
It pie in the sky. It will go for years, if not forever. Virtually all of the IPP projects are renewables, so do not contribute to base load, and in any case, are intended for the purposes of the company paying for them. This is going to go on until new grid linked power stations are built, and as long as the government freeze out the private sector from that core it will not happen.
Rob, it is not correct to say IPP do not contribute to baseload. For the last few years, the hourly (yes all hours of the day) IPP power has saved us two stages of loadshedding. Baseload is anyway a nonsense term. Our loads vary about 15GW during a week. Are the plants that supply GW numbers 21 to 22 baseload or not? Is 4GW of solar today 2pm different? Sadly, our wind and solar fleet is more reliably predictable in output next week than the coal fleet. FUBAR
How does this happen? How do the 300,000 people in Maluti-a-Phofung rack up, per man woman child, R25,000 each in electricity debt? Make that R150,000 per household or what should amount to more than a decade of non-payment. (The region is not awash with big business that consume large amounts of energy.) Put them on stage 8 – maybe people will vote differently if they only get free electricity half a day :/
Brilliant suggestion. Up the loadshed in municipaities where payment is not happening.
The illegal connections because “it should be free” mantra ought to be addressed and rectified as soon as possible.
The calculated debt as specified here simply does not make sense, except if the blind eye that has been turned towards this apathy has suddenly seen the light.