Reporting by Lerato Mbhiza with Johnathan Paoli | Videographer Tlholohelo Mosala
Amid an outcry over Stage 6 load shedding, Minister of Electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa told a media briefing on Friday that Eskom would initiate two interventions to ensure that there was an energy buffer during the festive weeks of December.
Ramokgopa apologised for the load shedding and said they would provide a further update on the progress of the situation on Sunday.
He explained that another big factor in the load shedding was that they had to replenish emergency generation reserves.
“We want to give you the assurance that we are doing everything possible to deliver on our promise to eliminate load shedding.
“This is an unwelcome event we should frown upon … We want to apologise sincerely because we understand the significant disruption to people and business is extreme,” he said.
Eskom has unexpectedly ramped up load shedding from Stage 4 to Stage 6 and Ramokgopa said the power utility had no choice but to deplete its emergency reserves in order to maintain power to the national grid.
There had been a few units at power stations failing this week, the main reason for implementing stage 6 load shedding was because Eskom had overcommitted its reserves and, in accordance with the Unplanned Capacity Loss Factor (UCLF), needed to draw from the grid to replenish its reserves now, he said.
Eskom said unplanned outages were currently at over 15,901MW of generating capacity, while a further 5,800MW of generating capacity were currently out of service.
Bheki Nxumalo, the head of generation at Eskom, told the media briefing that the heatwave, with an increased demand for air conditioning and fans, could be blamed for the load shedding at Stage 6 level.
“The increase in demand today can be attributed to the heatwave we are experiencing because we suspect it is coming from the air conditioning,” he said.
“The impact of the hot conditions on the partial (load losses) will see stations like Matimba when it is so hot; the current partial (load losses) are standing at about 7,000 megawatts. The main impact is at Matimba, and at some of the stations there are impacts on condensers, but the bigger impact is at Matimba,” he said.
Nxumalo said the generating unit losses at the Majuba, Lethabo, and Tutuka power stations were not an indication that they were failing to maintain their maintenance backlogs, but that it was an issue of boiler tube leaks occurring at the same time.
“If you look at the boiler tube leaks, it’s not because of the maintenance backlog; even when you have the boiler, you can’t work on every boiler tube.”
“There are areas that are prone to high erosion, and from time to time the leaks happen, the problem comes when the leaks happen at the same time,” he said.
Speaking about the plans for the festive season Ramakgopa said: “So two interventions were made and of course, Eskom has already announced that if you look at the interventions we want to make, we should be back to a situation that is relatively acceptable,” Ramokogpa said.
Ramokgopa said that the interventions to restore Eskom’s energy reserves would result in significantly lower stages of load shedding during the next two weeks.
Ramokgopa also insisted that there had been no reversal in the recovery trend across the coal fleet and forecast that there would be “significantly lower levels of load shedding” in December, even predicting that there would be some days when no load shedding would be implemented.
He acknowledged, though, that the load shedding threat could only be eliminated with the introduction of new generation capacity, and said actions were being taken to unlock private capacity and resume public procurement.
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