South Africa's power lifeline frays as Eskom scrambles for diesel

Jan

Jan

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Eskom diesel emergency

Eskom is living hand-to-mouth in its efforts to obtain the diesel needed to continue running its open-cycle gas turbines (OCGTs), which, in the face of prolonged power generation outages, is the only way the utility can stave off severe and ongoing curtailment of South Africa’s electricity supply.

In the past two years, Eskom has been forced to rely increasingly on the OCGTs – which were intended only for dire emergencies or use during peak demand periods – because of a steadily increasing number of breakdowns within its ageing coal-fired power fleet.
 
sdrawk said:
Hit Stage 8, opposition parties call for early election, ANC gets toppled and a coalition govt wins majority.... And we would still be stuck with at least Stage 6 loadshedding for the foreseeable future
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Unfortunate truth. Too far down this rabbit hole. No entity / person will be able to fix this quickly.
 
RedViking said:
And who is maintaining the OCGTs if they not even maintaining the rest...... expecting a kaboom any day soon.
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This has to be a concern noting that, as I understand it, these were peaking stations and not meant to run continuously. They are much simpler than coal fired stations, and a but newer but can only last so long. Design operating hours before major overhaul? With the big gas engines design life is 60 000 operating hours (around 7.5 years at 8 000 oph annually).
 
RedViking said:
And who is maintaining the OCGTs if they not even maintaining the rest...... expecting a kaboom any day soon.
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OCGTs are similar to jet engines. Maintenance of OCGTs is usually done “on condition“, but there must be a laid down schedule of maintenance. I wonder if Eskom is responsible for the maintenance?
 
cyb3rt said:
Unfortunate truth. Too far down this rabbit hole. No entity / person will be able to fix this quickly.
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The only way to get a stable grid again is to introduce competition to Eskom. Even once approved they would have a massive task to undertake.
We are going to have outages for a while.
 
Cumulus said:
OCGTs are similar to jet engines. Maintenance of OCGTs is usually done “on condition“, but there must be a laid down schedule of maintenance. I wonder if Eskom is responsible for the maintenance?
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For the Eskom owned OCGT's they are 100% responsible for maintenance.

But also the maintenance will be considerably more pressing, I would assume an OCGT will work and within a short order of missing a scheduled maintenance window it will go *poof* and stop working.
 
Jan said:
Eskom diesel emergency

Eskom is living hand-to-mouth in its efforts to obtain the diesel needed to continue running its open-cycle gas turbines (OCGTs), which, in the face of prolonged power generation outages, is the only way the utility can stave off severe and ongoing curtailment of South Africa’s electricity supply.

In the past two years, Eskom has been forced to rely increasingly on the OCGTs – which were intended only for dire emergencies or use during peak demand periods – because of a steadily increasing number of breakdowns within its ageing coal-fired power fleet.
Click to expand...
So when is Christ Yelland taking over Eskom? Still waiting on his CEO application as well as Ted Blom's

/myshares has spoken
 
sdrawk said:
Hit Stage 8, opposition parties call for early election, ANC gets toppled and a coalition govt wins majority.... And we would still be stuck with at least Stage 6 loadshedding for the foreseeable future
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Depends how fast the coalition can get the loosening of restrictions around third parties and private producers. Short term we stuck but I think we'd be talking months vs years.
 
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