Due to various protection measures the risk of a complete grid collapse is “very low”, despite the company’s ageing, neglected infrastructure, Eskom says.
The state-owned utility also provided some relief to weary consumers with the announcement that load-shedding will be eased to stage 3 at 10pm on Wednesday as some units return to service after being repaired.
The state-owned utility escalated power cuts to stage 4 on Tuesday and warned that the country could face as many as 100 days of load-shedding in 2022.
It lost 16,519MW when units at four power plants broke down and 5,124MW more was unavailable due to maintenance.
The loss of capacity sparked fears of a total blackout, prompting CEO André de Ruyter and Eskom management to reassure South Africans that the lights would remain on.
“The likelihood of a blackout in terms of a total system going black is very low,” executive for transmission Segomoco Scheepers said.
“There are a range of protection measure devices that are designed into the system” including load-shedding, Scheepers said.
Concern sparked
De Ruyter said on Wednesday morning they are “reasonably comfortable that the system is in balance, and units are coming back online. Therefore, we are not particularly concerned about this [total blackout] risk.”
The concern about a grid collapse, in which it takes days to restore power, was sparked by a comment by energy analyst Chris Yelland.
Yelland told Business Day he still thinks a complete grid collapse is very unlikely, but too much of “the backbone” of Eskom’s main coal-powered fleet is out of service or at risk of faults.
But he referred to a weekly update published by the utility, which aims to have 2,000MW of power in reserve, estimating the system will only have the required reserve power for four weeks of the next year. Two of these will be over Christmas when factories close.
Eskom has the ability to generate about 44,000MW of power. But its scenarios show that it assumes that about 12,000MW of power will always be lost to breakages and 4,000MW-5,000MW more will be offline for maintenance.
Regulatory hurdles
Should more than 12,000MW of power be lost to breakdowns, as was the case this week, load-shedding is instituted.
SA’s power shortage could be fixed in two years if the government removes all the regulatory hurdles slowing down the private generation and sale of power, Yelland said.
Power cuts are scheduled to continue until Friday, but De Ruyter said Eskom is working to minimise outages in winter, including scaling back on planned maintenance. Moreover, many of the coal-fired plants operate better in a cool and dry climate, he said.
Koeberg’s 920MW Unit 2, which has been undergoing five months’ planned maintenance outage, is set to come back online on June 26.
However, De Ruyter said Eskom still needs about 6,000MW of additional capacity at its coal-fired plants, many of which are unable to run at optimum capacity as they were built in the 1970s.
Rapidly transitioning
“We have an ageing fleet that has had a very hard life. That requires a very expensive and extensive maintenance programme to keep them operating,” he said.
“Rapidly transitioning to a cleaner and greener generation footprint by allowing substantial new investment to take place in wind, solar, as well as some natural gas will play a meaningful role in reducing the risk to the electricity supply system in SA,” De Ruyter said.
Eskom, however, does not make policy; it implements it, he said.
The government recently lifted the cap on private power generation without requiring a licence to 100MW, but companies still need to apply to Nersa, the regulator, in a process that can cause delays.
The biggest issue is the registration of the individual projects with the regulator, De Ruyter said.
Eskom is working hard to put processes in place so it does not delay adding new capacity to the grid when it becomes available.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.