Eskom CEO André de Ruyter says SA shouldn’t accept frequent load-shedding “as the new normal”, even as the state-owned power utility has had to step up the frequency of power cuts.
Speaking at a media briefing on Wednesday, De Ruyter said Eskom had implemented rotational power cuts on 32 days so far in 2022, up from 26 in the same period a year earlier. To end load-shedding while allowing for adequate maintenance on its ageing coal-fired power stations, the company needs an additional 4,000MW-6,000MW.
“The addition of new capacity remains a priority,” he said.
Eskom COO Jan Oberholzer highlighted, however, that the current 4,000MW-6,000MW generation gap referred only to SA’s immediate power needs. In the near future, the country will need to bring online about five times more new generation capacity.
Within the next eight years, Eskom will retire 10,000MW of its coal-fired units (about a quarter of installed capacity) and by 2023 about nine of its coal stations will have to be taken out of service, amounting to lost generation capacity of 22,000MW — more than half of the coal-powered fleet.
SA will need to build between 40,000MW and 50,000MW of new generation capacity within the next 15 years to replace those units that will be retired and to provide for the country’s growing energy needs, Oberholzer said.
Eskom, which is saddled with debt of about R392bn, relies on regular bailouts from the government to keep operating and can ill afford investment on new capacity, placing the country, business and economic growth at risk of collapse.
During the Investing in African Mining Indaba in Cape Town this week, several presenters highlighted faltering supply of electricity as one of the factors holding back investment in the sector. Many miners have started to build renewable energy installations to decrease reliance on Eskom, and to cut carbon emissions attached to the minerals they produce due to the use of electricity from the state power utility’s coal-fired plants.
According to the Minerals Council SA, mining companies have now committed to 4GW of renewable energy projects worth R65bn in new investment.
Eskom is experiencing more breakdowns and consequently planning for total unavailable capacity of between 12,000MW and 15,000MW during the winter months, which is “excessive”, but in line with performance since the start of this year, said MD of transmission, Segomoco Scheppers.
Under a scenario of 12,000MW-13,500MW unavailable, Eskom would have to implement 37 days of stage 2 load-shedding, when 2,000MW is removed from the national grid. If that rose to 15,000MW, 104 days of stage 3 (or higher) would have to be implemented between May and August.
More than 15,000MW of generation capacity was offline because of breakdowns at various stages this week.
Scheppers emphasised that the scenario planning for the winter months was not meant to be interpreted as a load-shedding outlook.
Eskom executives said the greatest source of the utility’s troubles was the unreliability of its coal-fired power stations. On Wednesday, none of its 15 coal stations were operating at full capacity.
The energy availability factor (a measure of the amount of electricity generated versus the installed generation potential) across the Eskom network — which includes coal power stations, renewable energy, Koeberg nuclear power station in Cape Town and emergency generation units — was about 67%. However, the energy availability factor of the coal-fired fleet was about 55%.
Eskom is hoping to see additional capacity come online from various power procurement programmes from the middle of 2023. That includes the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers Procurement Programme and the Risk Mitigation Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme.
However, until that capacity becomes available, the risk of power cuts remains high, Oberholzer said.
De Ruyter said there has been “a lot of interest” in plans to allow private companies to develop renewable projects on land adjacent to some of Eskom’s coal-fired power stations in Mpumalanga, where there is existing grid connection capacity.
The bidding process to lease land opened in April and interested parties have already visited the Tutuka and Majuba plants to assess the situation.
Oberholzer said municipal debt and electricity theft remain a challenge. Municipalities owe Eskom more than R40bn, he said.
Update: May 11 2022
This story has been updated with additional information.
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