Eskom's coal power fleet in dire straits

[Hanno Labuschagne]

Eskom's coal power fleet in dire straits

New data from energy expert Clyde Mallinson revealed that Eskom’s energy availability factor (EAF) for its coal fleet dropped to 46% in 2023.

Mallinson is a director at Virtual Energy and Power and Clean Energy Projects and a regular commentator about South Africa’s electricity problems.

 

[Cranjus McBasketball]

The "it's all fixed because we had a few good days" crowd are in for a rude awakening soon.
But hey, at least BEE/AA has fixed it all

 

[AlphaJohn]

 

[r00igev@@r]

The project manager is on the job!

 

[Gazg]

Don't worry about all that.........morale is high! /s

 

[TheChamp]

New data from energy expert Clyde Mallinson

Who the hell is he and what happened to our Ted Blom?

 

[Lupus]

Who the hell is he and what happened to our Ted Blom?

He runs a renewable country, his proposed building massive batteries to end LS

 

[Vox Populi Vox Dei]

He published a chart of Eskom fleet and coal fleet energy availability factor up to week 9 for 2023.

But hasn't Eskom recently (like in past 1.5 weeks) improved its EAF at key power stations? Nine weeks only goes up to the first week of March.

 

[Temujin]

46% is extremely good for ANC. 16% above a passing grade so plenty of room to play with

 

[Lupus]

Also the chart? The one on the data portal

 

[DrJohnZoidberg]

 

[3WA]

But hasn't Eskom recently (like in past 1.5 weeks) improved its EAF at key power stations? Nine weeks only goes up to the first week of March.

I don't think Clyde thought about that.

 

[Johand]

I doubt we will ever reach the EAFs on the coal power plants again. The problem with missed maintenance seems to be that we can "catch-up" the maintenance that we missed.

If you don't maintain something properly you shorten it's life. You can drive a car for 10 years without changing its oil and think that because you changed it once everything is fine now - you have caused permanent damage by not maintaining it and no amount of corrective maintenance is going to fix it.

Regular maintenance has been sold to the public as a solution. It never was a solution - it is all about preventing the problem becoming even worse!