Eskom will resume stage 2 rotational power cuts for the rest of the week from 5pm on Tuesday, removing 2,000MW from the national grid, amid further breakdowns and delays in returning generators to service.
The state-owned utility said that in addition to 3,875MW removed from the system due to planned maintenance, another 15,067MW of capacity was unavailable due to the breakdowns.
The latest load-shedding comes a week after the last round of cuts in April, which saw 11 days of reduced supply, and contributed to a sharp decline in manufacturing in April, according to the Absa Purchasing Managers’ index published earlier on Tuesday.
Eskom reported unit failures at the Lethabo, Tutuka, Ingula, Drakensberg, Arnot, Hendrina and Matla plants in a statement on Tuesday, along with delays in returning generators to service at Arnot and Kendal and three units at Tutuka.
“[We] expect to rely on the use of emergency generating reserves to limit the stage of load-shedding during this period,” Eskom said.
The company’s executives have made repeated calls for the government to finalise and implement emergency power procurement agreements that would help cover a generation gap of 4,000MW to 6,000MW.
The government’s emergency power plan, called the Risk Mitigation Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (RMIPPPP), was designed to procure 2,000MW of new generation capacity from a range of suppliers and different energy sources.
The bid winners were announced in early 2021, but the rollout of the programme has been delayed due to a court case lodged by a losing bidder that has prevented projects from achieving financial close, and due to delays by Eskom in the signing of power purchase deals with the winning bidders.
In addition, last week civil society organisations announced that they would oppose in court the National Energy Regulator of SA’s (Nersa) decision to grant electricity licences to Karpowership SA, which was granted the largest share of the RMIPPPP at 1,220MW.
The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) issued a statement indicating that it had filed an application for the North Gauteng High Court to review and set aside Nersa’s decision to grant three Karpowership independent power producer (IPP) generation licences. Nonprofit organisation The Green Connection has lodged a separate, but similar application with the court.
According to Nersa, it had not yet received the court application, so it was unable to advise whether it will be opposing the application.
The energy availability factor — a measure of the available generation capacity as a percentage of total installed generation capacity — across Eskom’s coal-powered fleet is about 60%. That means just 24,000MW out of a total installed capacity of about 38,000MW (of coal-fired power) is generally available, supplemented by renewable supplies and the utility’s emergency generation fleet to meet demand that tends to fluctuate between 27,000MW and 32,000MW.
Eskom has previously said that, for the period of April to August, with an assumption of 13,000MW of unplanned unavailability, SA could experience 61 days of stage 2 load-shedding.
It has also warned that a worst-case scenario could result in 100 days of rotational power cuts during the coming winter.
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.