South Africa is at “high risk” of increased rolling blackouts over the coming winter, state supplier Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd warned on Thursday, but insisted there would be no power collapse.
“The outlook shows that with breakdowns or unavailable capacity due to unplanned maintenance at 15,000 MW [megawatts]offloading could be implemented mainly in stage 5 during the winter period,” he said in a press release after a winter electricity briefing starting in June. The fifth stage means that 5,000MW will be taken off the grid under its offload policy, a legal remedy to avoid a nationwide blackout through scheduled outages.
“If unplanned outages are average [sic] at 18 000 MW, one discharge could be required every day and could be implemented up to stage 8,” said Eskom, which supplies about 95 percent of the country’s power needs, according to the Department of Public Utilities Stage 8 could cause customers to experience outages several times throughout the day for a total of 12 hours.
“Eskom emphasizes that the 18,000MW scenario that could culminate in stage 8 is the worst-case scenario that Eskom is working tirelessly to avoid at all costs – by any means necessary,” the company added.
Generation executive Bheki Nxumalo said at Thursday morning’s briefing, as quoted in the statement: “We strive to reduce plant breakdowns to 15 000MW or less during the winter period to keep the discharge at lower stages. However, we admit that this will be extremely difficult given the unreliability and unpredictability of the power generation fleet and that we are already about 3,000 MW worse off this winter compared to the same period last year” .
He said the power generation system has continued to malfunction with frequent plant breakdowns.
“The current situation is aggravated by the loss of four large units that are in prolonged outages,” the statement said. Units 1, 2 and 3 of the Kusile Power Station have been shut down since a gas line failure in October 2022 and restart is not expected until November. Closed for maintenance and refueling, unit 1 of the Koeberg power station was only able to resume supply in September.
The unavailability of the four units has removed 3,080 MW from the grid, “the equivalent of three stages of discharge,” the statement said.
Board chairman Mpho Makwana also blamed corruption for South Africa’s power problems, telling the briefing, as quoted in the statement: “Corruption undermines value creation and is a enemy of progress, it must be completely uprooted so that it does not hinder our performance efforts.improvement.
“Working through the National Energy Crisis Committee (NECOM) streams we see the fruits of collaboration between our internal forensic department, the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the Special Investigation Unit (SIU) to deal with cases of corruption”.
However, interim CEO Calib Cassim said there has been encouraging progress. “The establishment of NECOM and the development of the South African Energy Action Plan, overseen by the government, are some of the positive developments aimed at addressing the electricity crisis.
“Also, Nersa’s determination [National Energy Regulator of South Africa] of a favorable tariff increase as well as the debt relief solution from the National Treasury are critical enablers of the sustainable electricity supply industry.”
Broadcasting executive Segomoco Scheppers eased fears of a nationwide outage by saying there are a number of preventative measures in place, including offloading. Eskom earlier rejected claims of an imminent power collapse.
“In no event is the grid at increased or imminent risk of collapse and it would take a sequence of unforeseen and sudden events to result in a cascading collapse of the transmission or generation system, leading to a total loss of supply across the country,” he said in a statement to the media on Tuesday.
“Eskom has robust contingency plans to deal with this eventuality.”
In Thursday’s statement, it said it “will continue to rely heavily on the extensive use of open-cycle gas turbines (OCGTs) to avoid higher stages of discharge, particularly during the morning and afternoon peak.”
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