{"id":525489,"date":"2024-02-17T15:10:06","date_gmt":"2024-02-17T13:10:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=525489"},"modified":"2024-02-17T15:10:47","modified_gmt":"2024-02-17T13:10:47","slug":"eskom-maintenance-lie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/investing\/525489-eskom-maintenance-lie.html","title":{"rendered":"Eskom maintenance lie"},"content":{"rendered":"

Contrary to statements from government officials, Eskom is not conducting more maintenance than in the past. Load-shedding is, therefore, not due to an intense maintenance plan but rather increasing unplanned breakdowns.<\/p>\n

Politicians have been blaming load-shedding on increased maintenance regularly over the past few years, saying that it is \u201cshort-term pain for longer-term gain\u201d.<\/p>\n

Last year, President Cyril Ramaphosa famously\u00a0said<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0South Africans should see the current stage 6 load-shedding in a positive light for this reason.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe load-shedding that we are going through now is occasioned by what Eskom is having to do to reposition the generation of our fleet,\u201d Ramaphosa said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are maintaining our fleet. They are making sure that incidents of load-shedding that have been given rise to in the past because of unplanned load-shedding events like breakdowns are put behind us.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that the more intense load-shedding will not last. \u201cThis, as much as it is stage 6, is of a short-term nature,\u201d Ramaphosa said.<\/p>\n

Deputy President Paul Mashatile echoed Ramaphosa\u2019s sentiment late last year.<\/p>\n

He told the Parliamentary Press Gallery Association late last year that intensive maintenance was being done at power stations to relieve the ongoing power cuts in the long term.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are allowing Minister Ramokgopa to do a lot of maintenance. So, if you see a bit of a spike at the moment, they are doing intensive maintenance,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have taken a lot of them for maintenance. When they return online, you will see reduced load shedding.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Pravin Gordhan, Gwede Mantashe, and Cyril Ramaphosa on Eskom Tutuka power station tour<\/p><\/div>\n

Of late, Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has been saying that Eskom is conducting more maintenance than previously, resulting in load-shedding still being a reality.<\/p>\n

In a media briefing at the end of January, Ramokgopa\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0that Eskom is exceeding expectations with its performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have turned the corner, but I\u2019m not suggesting that we have ended load shedding,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The Minister also revealed that available capacity has \u201cconsistently\u201d exceeded peak demand over the past two weeks.<\/p>\n

However, there are reasons that load shedding continues to be implemented.<\/p>\n

First, at least 3,000MW of available capacity is drawn from open-cycle gas turbines (OCGT), burning expensive diesel.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe second reason is that planned maintenance is still significantly high. We are hitting about 8,000 to 9,000MW of planned maintenance,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven with that scale of planned maintenance, we still have a situation where we can keep load shedding at Stage 3, or oscillate between no load shedding to Stage 3.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Ramokgopa is correct that Eskom is performing more maintenance compared to last year, this claim is disingenuous as it ignores that high levels of planned maintenance also include failures to return units on time, which should be reflected as breakdowns.<\/p>\n

The claims made by politicians that more intense maintenance is the reason behind load-shedding are proven false by the graph below.<\/p>\n

This graph compares Eskom\u2019s unplanned outages to their planned maintenance. It shows that unplanned outages have steadily increased over the past few years while maintenance has stayed relatively flat.<\/p>\n

According to Standard Bank chief economist Goolam Ballim, this graph shows that Eskom is locked in a vicious cycle.<\/p>\n

Eskom\u2019s rising unplanned outages impede necessary maintenance, causing further breakdowns and limiting future maintenance, creating a negative spiral, he explained.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Source: Standard Bank Economy 2024<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

This article was first published by Daily Investor<\/a><\/strong> and is reproduced with permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Politicians blame ongoing load-shedding on increased maintenance. However, Eskom’s data shows it is actually due to rising unplanned breakdowns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341119,"featured_media":520593,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80335],"tags":[181,35,8487],"class_list":["post-525489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-investing","tag-eskom","tag-headline","tag-load-shedding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525489"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525489"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":525493,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525489\/revisions\/525493"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/520593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}