Eskom warn of imminent load shedding as power stations struggle

During a briefing on the current state of embattled power supplier Eskom on Thursday 22 October, CEO Andre De Ruyter delivered some desperately bad news, warning that South Africans should prepare themselves to suffer load shedding while they continue to run maintenance on their “ageing and unreliable” infrastructure. 

De Ruyter said that coal stations around the country are currently taking major strain in their old age, and said that in order to implement efforts that aim to improve Eskom’s capacity to fulfil electricity demands, load shedding has to be introduced as a necessary evil. 

Eskom warn of imminent load shedding risk  

Eskom said that the plants should be back to full operational capacity by September 2021. 

“The majority of the coal power stations are operating past the midway of their operational life, resulting in high amounts of breakdowns,” they said. “The drive to implement the reliability measures and refurbishment projects in order to address the unreliability is under way to get the plant performance back to acceptable levels by late 2021.”

“The public is therefore cautioned to expect an increased risk of load shedding during this period.”

Eskom has been able to stave off the implementation of load shedding since mid September, but it now seems inevitable that the country will be plunged into darkness yet again in the near future. 

This comes as a major blow to the country’s fragile economy as it struggles to haul itself out of turmoil brought on by the nationwide lockdown this year. 

Reliability maintenance progressing ‘successfully’ 

In a statement released after the briefing, Eskom said that it is committed to recovering its operational performance and restoring the stability of the power system. 

“Eskom has not implemented rotational load shedding since 8 September 2020, and for three successive weeks during this period managed to meet South Africa’s electricity needs with minimal use of open-cycle gas turbines,” they said. 

This success was swiftly brought into perspective though when De Ruyter cautioned that more work still needs to be done to achieve operational stability and to restore the security of energy supply for the country. 

“Over the past eight months we redoubled our efforts and commenced with the implementation of modifications to repairs to the design defects at Medupi and Kusile power stations, which is yielding the desired results and increasing available capacity for the system,” said de Ruyter. 

“We also continue to implement our Turnaround Plan which is geared towards improving Eskom’s performance to achieve sustainability and guarantee security of electricity supply,” he said. 

Eskom reduce unplanned maintenance incidents  

Eskom said that they have focused on conducting reliability maintenance on the rest of the power stations, “which is aimed at improving the performance of Eskom’s ageing generation fleet”. 

“The reliability maintenance is in full swing, and the tangible benefits of the work will start being felt by April 2021. We envision that we will have significantly reduced, but not eliminated, the risk of load shedding by September next year,” said De Ruyter.

Eskom Chief Operating Officer, Jan Oberholzer, said that progress has been made in terms of lowering unplanned outages, saying that while the energy availability factor (EAF) is lower compared to the same period last year, the unplanned capacity loss factor, (UCLF) (commonly referred to as unplanned generation outages) has slightly improved with a reduction from 23% to 19%. 

“We also managed to perform 2% more planned maintenance against the 8% target, while striking a delicate balance between plant maintenance and keeping the lights on, working within the limitations imposed on us by the national lockdown and strict compliance with COVID-19 guidelines during the last five months,” he said. 

COVID-19 claims lives of 29 Eskom employees 

Acting Group Executive for Generation, Rhulani Mathebula, said that the Generation Recovery 9-Point Plan has meant that Eskom has successfully returned to service six of the seven units on long-term outages.

“Furthermore, we have also filed 1 384, or 75% of the 1 852 of the critical positions identified under this plan as at April this year,” he said. 

He added that the COVID-19 pandemic has sadly claimed the lives of 29 Eskom employees. He said that there had been 1 992 total cases among staff, and that the recovery rate for this group stands at 94%.