Nom Chompsky
High Tory
Longer, without warning
What’s most revealing about the timelines through last week is how quickly Eskom went from a situation that was manageable (and that it had predicted) to an all-out emergency. One can only imagine the chaos between 11am and noon on Friday. How do you lose 2 000MW of generating capacity in an hour?
The load shedding time-blocks are creeping longer, faster. Stage 3 load shedding ran until 10pm on Friday. This is a Friday night in December, where demand is not anywhere near peak. Stage 3 ran from 6am to 10pm on Saturday. This is completely unprecedented!
Eskom has also seemed to very quietly rewritten the rules. Stage 3 load shedding used to allow for 3 000MW of “load to be shed”. Now, that number is suddenly 4 000MW.
Capacity
In its (quietly published) System Status Bulletin 302 from Thursday, Eskom stated that it had “28 400 MW (including open cycle gas turbines)” capacity available on that day, with peak demand “forecast at 30 181 MW”.
Given that its open cycle gas turbines are capable of providing just over 2 000 MW (1 332MW peak at Ankerlig, 740MW peak at Gourikwa), and that it’s using its two pump storage schemes (Drakensburg and Palmiet) overtime to generate as much as 1 400MW, Eskom’s base load power stations are currently generating under 25 000 MW.
Remove the notoriously unreliable 1 500MW of imports from Cahora Bassa (there are maintenance windows practically every weekend which exacerbate the situation, along with continual issues on the transmission lines from Mozambique) and you get a figure of closer to 23 500MW. That’s 55% of its total capacity online.
Add back the Cahora Bassa supply (which is base load power), and you get to 60%. In other words, 40% of Eskom’s total generating capacity is offline (or, in the case of the gas turbines, perpetually close to running out of diesel).
On Thursday, Eskom put its current planned maintenance at 5 295 MW, with unplanned outages of 8 377MW. That unplanned figure is frightening, especially when you compare it with Medupi’s total generating capacity of 4 800MW (at current timelines, estimated to be completely online by the end of 2018).
No more room to move
By its own published numbers, Eskom has 42 072 MW of generating capacity. The truth is that number hasn’t grown significantly since 2008/2009 (when its capacity was 40 503 MW). It’s increased by 4% (net) … but how, if it added 6 137 MW of capacity since 2005?
The first problem is that the rapid decline in plant performance has offset two-thirds of this additional capacity. It’s been adding generation capacity to stand still. The second problem is it’s run out of quick-fixes. This is the first year in nine that Eskom hasn’t added a single megawatt to generating capacity. We’ve got no option but to wait for the “imminent” synchronisation of the first unit at Medupi. Best case, that’ll happen by June next year. The delivery of each Kusile unit would be approximately 12 months after the corresponding ones at Medupi.
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Can it get worse?
What happens after Stage 3? What happens when there's a shortfall of more than 4 000MW?
There are murmurs that ‘Stage 3B’ (which we did or didn’t reach on Friday, depending on who you believe) is effectively Stage 4. Monday afternoon’s media briefing from Eskom chief executive Tshediso Matona will go one of two ways: either things are going to get better from here, or they’re not.
And our indefatigable Minister of Energy, Tina Joemat Pettersson? Last we heard, she’d be running “nuclear vendor parade workshops” in the Drakensburg (and no, she wasn’t in China with President Jacob Zuma at the end of last week). She literally hasn’t been seen for weeks.
Minister of Public Enterprises Lynne Brown made her last public comments on Eskom at the utility’s financial results presentation on November 25. One wonders if either of them will be seated next to Matona at Megawatt Park on Monday.
Read full article: http://www.moneyweb.co.za/moneyweb-blogs-from-the-sidelines/just-how-bad-are-things-at-eskom
