Dark days and blackouts ahead for South Africa
South Africans should brace themselves for more load-shedding as Eskom’s ailing infrastructure remains vulnerable to breakdowns.
Eskom CEO André de Ruyter told Parliament their aging power plants, many which are more than 40 years old, are prone to problems.
The power utility is currently busy with a second phase of maintenance of these ailing generation plants, which will continue through the winter months.
As maintenance requires generation units to be taken offline, the available capacity is significantly reduced. This, in turn, makes the grid vulnerable to unexpected breakdowns.
This is what happened in recent weeks when breakdowns and delays in returning units to service forced Eskom to implement load-shedding.
Yesterday, for example, 14,719MW of capacity was lost due to “unplanned unavailability”, while a further 2,220MW was unavailable due to planned maintenance.
This shortage of generation capacity resulted in load-shedding last night, with a warning of further blackouts unless the generators are returned to service as expected.
Commenting on the blackouts, De Ruyter explained that they are doing catchup maintenance – the so-called reliability maintenance recovery programme – which is progressing well.
“We anticipate when we have completed the second tranche of units by the end of the third quarter of the year, there will be significant reduction in the risk of load-shedding,” he said.
While the current maintenance programme will limit the need for load-shedding after September 2021, it will not eliminate it completely.
Stated plainly, Eskom is not able to generate enough electricity to meet demand – especially when older generation units are taken offline for maintenance.
Eskom CEO Andre De Ruyter
De Ruyter said the only way to eradicate load-shedding is to get more generation capacity – notably from independent power producers (IPP).
“The only way in which we can structurally eliminate that risk is by adding new capacity to the grid,” he said.
“We therefore welcome continued efforts by the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy to add new capacity to the grid by means of various IPP programmes.”
The government has recently announced the preferred bidders for the government’s emergency risk mitigation IPP programme, but it will take time for these projects to come online.
Energy expert Chris Yelland said in October 2020 that the new capacity will most probably only come on stream in three to four years’ time.
Financial closure and construction are still required for the winning IPP bidders, which can take years.
Although it will help to address electricity shortages in the long term, this latest development will not solve load-shedding in the coming years.
Another initiative which can help is the ongoing project to fix the Medupi and Kusile coal-fired power stations and bring the outstanding units online.
Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha previously said load-shedding will continue until the repair work to correct the design defects at the Medupi and Kusile power stations has been completed.
This will also take a long time to complete. It is anticipated that the project will only be completed in 2022.
This means that for the foreseeable future, rolling blackouts will continue to be a reality in South Africa.
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