A large part of electricity minister’s plan to ease load-shedding over the next six months, beginning in May, includes ramping the use of Eskom’s emergency diesel-powered generators, improving the performance of the power utility's five worst performing power stations and exempting some national key point from power blackouts.
These interventions were presented to the ANC national executive committee (NEC) by Kgosientsho Ramokgopa on Friday after being endorsed by the party's national working committee (NWC) earlier in the week.
Should they be implemented during the winter period where energy demand often outstrips supply, Eskom will be able to save 4,500MW, which is roughly the equivalent of the megawatts removed from the grid when Eskom implements stage 4 load-shedding.
“These are the actions that have to be taken up immediately ... you are not going to avoid load-shedding even with these interventions but we want to ensure that the levels of load-shedding still make it possible for major industries to operate,” Ramokgopa told reporters on Saturday.
Questioned on the credibility of the short-term interventions considering that Ramokgopa has not yet been assigned any ministerial powers required to execute the proposals, Ramokgopa said that the plans, specifically with regard to procurement, lie within the responsibilities of the minerals and energy department, which is led by mineral resources and energy minister Gwede Mantashe.
The first proposal by Ramokgopa is increasing the use of Eskom’s open-cycle gas turbines (OCGTs), which are needed to compensate for the loss of capacity due to breakdowns at Eskom’s coal-fired power stations.
Running the OCGT’s however comes at a high cost for the cash strapped power utility. The OCGTs — Ankerlig and Gourikwa — have a combined generation capacity of 2,000MW, which is equal to the amount of power that is dropped from the grid at stage 2 load-shedding.
Business Day previously reported that it is also not possible for Eskom to use more than R2.4bn of diesel (about 100-million litres at current wholesale prices) in a month due to the logistical limitations of delivering the diesel to the OCGT stations.
To finance the use of the OCGTs over the next months, Ramokgopa says the power utility should make use of the funds provided for it within Nersa’s 18.65% tariff increase for 2023/24 to it for diesel-powered generators and from the funds allocated to Eskom from the fiscus in February.
“This will make about R30bn available for diesel procurement,” Ramokgopa said.
“The government should consider buying directly from suppliers ... so whatever savings can be made by cutting the middle man.”
The second proposal is to improve the performance of Tutuka, Kendal, Majuba, Duvha and Matla power stations, which all have recorded an energy availably factor of below 50%.
“To undermine the adverse of more units failing Eskom will reduce the rate at which they are taking out units [for unplanned maintenance],” Ramokgopa said.
To manage demand, Ramokgopa is advocating for remotely switching off high-energy appliances from households such as geysers combined with a public campaign encouraging the reduction of use of electricity.
The fourth proposal by Ramokgopa is exempting national key points including hospitals, communications infrastructure and police stations from load-shedding. He, however, conceded that the exemptions could be difficult because most of the infrastructure was in residential areas, which may not be exempted from the power cuts.
“We are going to produce emergency solutions to ensure that there is uninterrupted supply of power,” Ramokgopa said.
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