MAINTENANCE POWERED UP AS ESKOM TRIES TO STABILISE POWER CUTS

The power utility has prioritised power stations supplying almost a fifth of SA’s electricity for maintenance. It needs to do more to ensure predictable outages going forward.

- Mariam Isa

load-shedding will remain a permanent feature of the South African landscape for at least 18 months as Eskom tackles the debilitating results of more than a decade of neglect and deferred maintenance, which has left its fleet of coal-fired plants increasingly prone to unexpected breakdowns.

Plans which are being finalised by the utility suggest that around 25 000MW of power can be reliably provided during that period – well below the current demand of about 29 000MW, which normally rises to above 30 000MW in the winter.

Eskom’s chief operating officer, Jan Oberholzer, said in an interview with finweek that he believed this would be the likely outcome of increasing planned maintenance to above 6 000MW per day from below 5 000MW previously, in order to take units offline for proper overhauls and mid-life refurbishments.

This leaves a big power supply gap for the economy, which government is hoping to quickly address, mainly through a range of measures to unlock generation from the private sector – which it has been campaigning for over many months.

Minerals Council CEO Roger Baxter says that mining companies could easily generate 1 500MW from renewables, but this would take between nine and 36 months to get up and running.

Oberholzer says that the risk of load-shedding will diminish over the maintenance period, because the strategy is to focus on repairing units which will deliver maximum benefits in terms of generation capacity and longevity.

The three power stations that will be prioritised are Kendal, Duvha and Tutuka, which together will provide around 10 000MW of power, he said. “There will be a specific and deliberate focus on those power stations – that’s where we want to get predictability and reliability,” he said.