No load shedding expected in summer

Louise Flanagan

ESKOM hopes to get through summer without any load shedding.

The power utility plans to continue the maintenance programme. It could take a year to clear the remaining backlog and speed up the building of new power stations.

“Summer projections are that no load shedding is expected,” said Eskom chief executive Brian Molefe at yesterday’s quarterly briefing on the state of the system.

In the last 99 days, there has been one day of load shedding (for two hours and 20 minutes, on September 14) and one day when key industrial customers had stage two load curtailment (for five hours and 30 minutes, on October 9), said Molefe.

Group executive for generation Matshela Koko said that while all the legally required statutory maintenance was up to date, there was still a year’s worth of maintenance backlog of about 28 units. This work was delayed due to the previous policy of keeping the lights on.

“These are significant. That’s why we say we are going to hurry up slowly,” said Koko.

“We are going to schedule them in a controlled manner… We should be able to come out of this in the next 12 months.”

Molefe said that three times more maintenance work had been done during the past winter than ever before and the performance of the power stations had stabilised, with unplanned outages below the target of 7 000MW. The maintenance budget is 4 500MW.

Eskom has connected 43 independent power producers to the network, offering 2 012MW of power to the commercial operation.

Eskom expects to bring some of the new power station generating units online ahead of schedule, with the hope of ensuring supply in winter.

“Our focus is on fast tracking the capacity building programme,” said Molefe.

The next new units due to start commercial operation are all four Ingula units which are currently due in 2017, the first Medupi unit in March 2018 and the first Kusile unit in July 2018.

Eskom has still not finalised a deal with its insurers on the March 2014 damage to Duvha power station, but executives said a deal was imminent. They would not say how much the insurers were expected to pay, or how much of the cost Eskom may have to bear due to the allegations that the damage was caused by negligence.

Contracts for work to replace the coal silo which collapsed at Majuba a year ago are due to be signed next month and work is due to take two years.

Koko and Molefe said the silo collapsed due to a “design flaw” linked to an inadequate building code at the time; they said neither designers nor builders were to blame.

“Eskom has turned the corner,” said Eskom board chairperson Baldwin Ngubane, and thanked South Africans for heeding the utility’s call to use electricity sparingly.

louise.flanagan@inl.co.za