Eskom has warned that there is a high risk of load-shedding continuing until Friday as the struggling state-owned power utility battles to bring generation units back online while suffering new outages.
Last week Eskom lost eight generation units with a combined capacity of 3,800MW due to boiler tube leaks. Some of these units have still not been brought back online.
“We are short of generating capacity needed to supply the country’s demand,” said Eskom COO Jan Oberholzer during a media briefing on Monday.
The expected generation shortfall for Monday night was 4,000MW. A trip at Kusile power station forced Eskom to increase planned load-shedding for Monday by an additional 1,000MW from stage 3 to stage 4 (when 4,000MW is dropped from the grid).
Oberholzer said load-shedding is likely to be implemented between 5pm and 10pm every night until Friday. However, if there are more capacity losses and too much pressure on emergency generation reserves, Eskom “may be forced to implement load-shedding throughout the day”.
About 19,000MW of generation capacity was unavailable on Monday out of Eskom’s total installed capacity (including emergency generation units) of about 41,000MW.
According to Oberholzer about 40-million litres of diesel have been used since the start of May to power open cycle gas turbines to provide emergency generation capacity. “We are burning 2-million litres of diesel per day, and we have to be careful not to deplete our emergency reserves.”
The recent performance of one of SA’s newest coal-fired power stations, Kusile, is a “big disappointment”, said Eskom CEO André de Ruyter.
The power station was generating only 540MW from its three commercial units, which have combined generation capacity of 2,400MW. At completion Kusile will consist of six units with a generation capacity of 800MW each to produce a maximum 4,800MW.
Some of the outages at Kusile are due to repairs to the emissions control equipment (flue gas desulphurisation), which has been the source of “considerable problems” on one of the generation units.
As if its generation woes are not enough, the power utility is also facing potential work stoppages from disgruntled workers over pay increases.
The National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) and National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), which represent most of its estimated 46,000 workers, are demanding a one-year, 15% across-the-board wage hike and a housing allowance of R1,600. They also want the utility to close the “apartheid wage gap”.
The demand is above the inflation rate of 5.9% for March, as reported by Stats SA.
Tommy Wedderspoon, sector co-ordinator for Solidarity, said the trade union is demanding consumer price index (CPI) plus 2.5% (8.4%).
Numsa’s and NUM’s wage demands are in line with the above-inflation increases mineworkers, steel sector workers and public servants — including teachers, police officers, nurses and doctors — are demanding.
De Ruyter said Eskom is not in a position to grant a double-digit wage increase. It “is still in a loss-making situation. I am not sure where Numsa gets the idea that we have lots of cash available,” he said at the briefing on Monday.
The parties met at the Eskom central bargaining forum (CBF) last week — where the employer and unions discuss wages and conditions of employment — for a second round of talks, but the unions said management has not responded to their demands for higher wages for the 2022/2023 financial year.
While Numsa and NUM demanded a 15% pay hike and 9% for Solidarity, in 2021 Eskom unilaterally implemented a 1.5% wage increase, saying it could not afford the unions’ demands.
NUM chief negotiator Helen Diatile said: “We are demanding 15% because of the economy, of course, and to address the widening salary gap between management and ordinary workers. We are also challenging the company’s decision to implement a 1.5% wage increase in 2021” at the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration.
In a statement on Monday, Numsa general secretary Irvin Jim said the union rejects the “false narrative” that Eskom does not have money to meet workers’ wage demands.
“We made it clear at the CBF that Eskom cannot claim poverty while they are spending billions on exorbitant primary energy costs. Since the 2016/2017 financial year, the primary energy costs have jumped from R83bn to R116bn. In other words, they increased by a whopping R33bn,” Jim said.
Independent power producers and coal and diesel costs “contributed immensely to the ballooning cost of primary energy. If, for example, all 28,300 employees of the central bargaining forum of Eskom got a 10% across-the-board increase, (which is an increase including pension fund, medical aid, 13th cheque and other benefits), it would cost only an additional R1.5bn per annum.”
Jim said Eskom’s management has provided no justification for claiming it cannot afford workers’ demands.
“Workers have not received a meaningful increase in two years and morale is very low, but [executives] continue to waste money paying for inflated contracts. Given these facts, Eskom management has clearly demonstrated that it can afford workers’ demands and so we will not accept anything less than a double-digit increase,” said Jim.
Update: May 16 2022
This story has been updated with additional information.
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