Eskom has promised to do everything in its power to keep load-shedding to a minimum during the upcoming local government elections.
“We are extremely committed as Eskom to make sure that there is no electricity challenge going through the elections that are around the corner now,” Eskom COO Jan Oberholzer said at state of the system briefing on Monday.
As voters head to the polls on November 1, Eskom will make use of emergency reserves during the day and recover it at night with a view to keep load-shedding to a minimum as votes are placed and counted. Opportunistic maintenance will also be considered within the election context. “Generation, transmission and distribution colleagues to be on standby as from the end of this week, until after the voting has taken place to make sure that wherever we do have challenges that Eskom colleagues will assist,” Oberholzer said.
Eskom also has portable emergency generators available to assist wherever possible, he said.
The commitment comes after Eskom reinstated load-shedding at the weekend, which will continue into Tuesday as several unplanned outages have put pressure on the power system, including a unit trip at the Koeberg nuclear power station.
Oberholzer has apologised for that, and emphasised that load-shedding was only implemented when absolutely necessary.
While Eskom’s reliability maintenance contributes to the generation capacity constraints, the utility remains committed to the programme that is expected to improve plant performance and reliability over time.
While Eskom’s transmission and distribution business units have performed well in the current financial year, the generation business remains beset with problems.
Having implemented 32 days of load-shedding days since April 1 — compared to 47 days for year-end in March — Oberholzer said it was “very worrying” to have reached this number of days already.
Plant performance, as measured by an Energy Availability Factor (EAF), was 65.3% and way below the 70% EAF target that Eskom has set itself for the current financial year.
The frequency of trips is really concerning, said Oberholzer. Unplanned losses are not coming down and have in fact risen to 23.1% against a target of 18% for the financial year.
Against a full-year budget target of R4.1bn, Eskom has so far spent R2.44bn to run its diesel generators, which have had to run harder and more frequently than anticipated.
The Duvha, Kendal and Tutuka power plants have been the worst performing of Eskom’s ageing plants, Oberholzer said, noting much of that related to a legacy of poor maintenance.
Ultimately, SA required an additional 4,000MW-6,000MW of generation capacity, Oberholzer said.
Ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) which begins on Sunday, Eskom has proposed a green deal to attract funding to expand its generation capacity in return for an accelerated decommissioning of its power stations.
Eskom CEO Andre De Ruyter was not present at Monday’s briefing as he is travelling to Europe to attend the conference.
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