Eskom’s board chair and CEO gave contrasting statements about the outlook for rolling electricity outages that have blighted society, knocked business confidence and threatened political careers.
Chair Mpho Makwana said that to implement Eskom’s generation recovery plan requires that “power stations are given space to execute [the plan] either by adding additional capacity ... or by creating some predictability by implementing a permanent stage 2 or 3 for the next two years”.
Later in a media conference on Sunday, when asked to clarify Eskom’s plans for permanent load-shedding CEO André de Ruyter said that having stage 2 or 3 in place on a continuous basis would do nothing to guarantee Eskom won’t need higher stages of load-shedding at certain times when there were high levels of unplanned outages.
“There are also times when the system performs well where we don’t require load-shedding at all. We are not in a position to say we can maintain certain stages of load-shedding over a prolonged period because of the lack of reliability and predictability [of the generation system]. We need the option of higher stages,” De Ruyter said.
Later on Sunday afternoon, after Makwana’s statement about permanent load-shedding had been widely reported, Eskom sent out a short statement to reiterate De Ruyter’s comments that although Eskom had considered such a step to give more predictability to the public, “this would not be possible as it would not guarantee that load-shedding would remain at the lower levels.”
Resignation
The conflicting statements come weeks after De Ruyter submitted his resignation as the boss of Eskom.
Eskom’s generation recovery plan shows that it will take at least two more years to add sufficient new generation capacity and to improve the efficiency of existing power stations to a level at which load-shedding might become unnecessary.
The state-owned power company is working with President Cyril Ramaphosa’s national energy crisis committee (Neccom) to implement a turnaround plan announced in July last year.
As Makwana pointed out, fixing Eskom by implementing the generation recovery plan is central to this plan to end load-shedding, which has become one of the largest threats to stability and economic growth in the country.
He said it would take at least two years to improve the energy availability factor (EAF) — a measure of the amount of energy being generated against the total installed generation capacity of Eskom’s entire fleet — from the current 58% to the targeted 70%.
Work is under way to improve EAF to 60% by the end of March, then to 65% by March 2024 and 70% a year later.
According to Thomas Conradie, the acting head of generation, the recovery plan for the next two years will focus on Tutuka, Kendal, Duvha, Majuba, Matla and Kusile.
Over the next six months, they hope to restore about 1,860MW to the grid (almost equal to two stages of load-shedding). Over the next 12 to 18 months, as some of the large 720MW units from Kusile are restored, about 3,350MW will be added to the grid. Towards the end of a 24-month period the return of Medupi unit 4, among others, will add another 1,000MW, which will bring the total megawatts added by improvements in plant performance to about 6,200MW.
This is in line with the plan published by Neccom last week.
Several factors could delay the EAF recovery plan, mainly the need to secure additional funding. Conradie said Eskom executives are “in close deliberation with the board” about the funding requirements.
De Ruyter said that given past experience, it was important to be realistic about the plan.
Ageing fleet
“In the past, we have seen that the performance of some of the units that have come back from these outages was not as we expected. We sit with an old fleet that will be difficult to restore,” he said.
“The opportunity to effect a step change through maintenance alone is limited. That is why we have always said that we need to add additional capacity as well.”
De Ruyter said: “Neccom has confirmed that there are already 9,200MW of embedded generation projects in the pipeline that will start feeding into the grid by the end of this year and this will make a meaningful difference.”
The Neccom plan sees 8,800MW being added to the grid in 2023, another 8,600MW in 2024, and 30,000MW beyond 2024.
Of the 8,800MW to be brought online this year, between 300MW, which has already been procured, and 1,675MW will be imported from neighbouring countries. The plan for this year also relies on 2,880MW being added by restoring Kusile units 1, 2 and 3 to service and by bringing unit 5 online. Units 1, 2, and 3 were shut down in 2022 after unit 1 had a chimney collapse.
The “road map to end load-shedding” has 23 items listed to be carried out to 2024 and beyond, and many of them, said Hilton Trollip, an energy research consultant and fellow at the University of Cape Town, are out of the control of the national government.
Many of the interventions proposed, except the “improving performance of existing power stations” are plausible, he said. But the programme being relied on to add the most megawatts to the grid, the Renewable Independent Power Producers Procurement Programme, “will require a completely revamped capacity in the department of mineral resources & energy and a very different attitude from the energy minister from that exhibited over the past years”.
Trollip is sceptical about the degree to which the performance of coal-fired power stations can be improved to substantially reduce load-shedding. The exception is the two newest Medupi and Kusile, where “most problems can be alleviated” for them to enter into full commercial operation.
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