Eskom will not compromise on its long-term maintenance efforts, despite the heightened risk of load-shedding, which has gripped the country.
At an Eskom state of the system briefing on Monday, Eskom COO Jan Oberholzer, said that while everyday of load-shedding was “unacceptable”, the utility remains committed to its reliability maintenance and mid-life refurbishment programme, which is expected to improve the operational performance of its fleet of power stations.
“The unreliability of the ageing fleet, with an uncertainty of about 6,000MW of capacity at any given time, will remain until the reliability maintenance programme is able to address the historical maintenance backlog,” said Oberholzer. "The power system remains vulnerable and volatile with the risk of load shedding significantly reduced after the completion of the reliability maintenance by September 2021.”
The continued commitment to the maintenance comes as SA remains in the grips of stage 2 load-shedding since it was implemented on Wednesday last week.
Eskom CEO André de Ruyter said the utility warned in January 2020 that reliability maintenance would increase the risk of load shedding but was needed to catch up with years of deferred maintenance, which has rendered its power stations highly unreliable.
Eskom’s energy availability factor (EAF) — which measures the availability of its power generation plants — is 65%, down from 67% a year ago. The goal is for it to rise to 70%.
Oberholzer said Tutuka and Duvha have particularly low EAFs of close to 40%.
There was, however, at the same time a “positive investment” in maintenance, which rose from 9% to nearly 13%.
Oberholzer said it appeared that the EAF appeared to have plateaued and Eskom needed to ensure it improved and did not deteriorate further.
Eskom said its transmission and distribution businesses performed well. In the generation business, Oberholzer said there had been “pockets of good performance”.
For example, De Ruyter said the availability and reliability of the synchronised units at Medupi were showing steady improvement. Major defects at Ingula Pumped Storage Scheme had been addressed, and all units had performed at full capacity since February.
Coal stock levels continued to improve, with average coal stock at 52 days by the end of February, excluding Medupi and Kusile. There is no power station below the grid code minimum requirement of 20 days.
He said the resilience of the power system during heavy rains and storm Eloise was a clear indication that the significant investment in the wet coal management strategy was paying dividends.
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