South Africans can expect Stage 4 load shedding until midnight for the next few days, with Stage 2 between midnight and 05:00.
This may be downgraded to Stage 3 during the day on Friday, with Stage 2 expected over the weekend, if offline power stations are returned as expected.
The intention is to lift load shedding in the next ten days or so, Eskom chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer told a media briefing on Monday morning. However, he warned that the unpredictability and unreliability of the system bring large risks.
Currently, almost 14 500MW are offline due to unplanned outages. While the expected demand for electricity will reach almost 32 000MW on Monday evening, Eskom only has around 20 000MW (excluding emergency supplies) available.
Eskom CEO André de Ruyter says the illegal strike at Eskom during wage talks hindered vital maintenance work at six power stations: Duvha, Arnot, Matla, Hendrina, Kamden, and Lethabo.
The deadlock ended last week as the utility and unions signed a one-year deal for a 7% wage increase.
De Ruyter told reporters that Eskom would still be pursuing internal disciplinary proceedings as well as legal action against strikers who intimidated staff that wanted to work at plants during the wage deadlock in June.
“The first process is internal disciplinary processes. We are not going to accept that workers were able to go on an illegal strike and engage in intimidation. There are also external legal processes and criminal charges to be laid.
“We have video footage of several incidences, and we are engaging police on charges to be laid. We are also greatly heartened by an announcement by the police commissioner and the president that a task team on sabotage has been established,” he said.
“Our colleagues are working extraordinarily hard to return to capacity. Kusile 1 is being restored to capacity. Today we have already seen Kriel 3 Medupi 5 and Hendrina 7. Medupi 6 and Arnot 4 are expected to return for the evening peak,” he said.
In total, 12 units are expected to return to service by Thursday this week, he said. A faulty transmission line from Cahora Bassa in Mozambique has been restored, while the Medupi Unit 6 returned to service on Saturday.
However, he warned it will take weeks to fully recover from the strike.
“After the initial recovery late last week, we had an increase, unfortunately, in load shedding, and that was due to increased demand. The generators that were limping during the strike have now been taken off to attend to failures and defects. We had generators delayed in returning to service,” said Oberholzer.
Oberholzer said Eskom expected the pressure on the electricity grid to be alleviated once Unit 2 of the Koeberg power station comes online by the end of July with 920MW. The unit was offline since January, and its return has been repeatedly delayed.
On Monday, Eskom announced that its chief nuclear officer Riedewaan Bakardien has resigned to join a Canadian company. Eskom manager Keith Featherstone, who has 30 years’ experience in the field, has been appointed in an acting position.
Current acting Koeberg Power Station General Manager Nomawethu Mtwebana will also leave Eskom for the next year as she joins the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO) as a “reverse loanee”. Mahesh Valaitham, a senior manager with over 27 years of nuclear power plant experience, will be filling the role of Koeberg PSGM in an acting capacity.
Long-term fixes
De Ruyter said that Eskom executives have been in conversation with various government departments over recent days to create more electricity production in South Africa.
He spoke of a “renewed sense of urgency” among government stakeholders to address the hurdles to increased power output.
On Monday, president Cyril Ramaphosa said in his weekly newsletter that government is consulting on measures and will announce a “comprehensive set of actions” in the coming days on how it intends to tackle power outages.
“Over the past two weeks, we have been working with the relevant ministers and senior officials on a range of additional measures to accelerate all efforts to increase our electricity supply. The message is clear: this is no time for business as usual. We need to act boldly to make load shedding a thing of the past,” Ramaphosa wrote.
Eskom has selected 18 companies to lease some of its unused land in Mpumalanga to develop renewable energy projects. These will add 1 800 MW of generation capacity to the grid. A further 2 000 hectares of land will be released by August. This will add about another 220MW to the grid. Eskom plans to release 33 000 hectares of its unused land for these projects in the rest of the country. These will be released in quarterly phases, according to De Ruyter.
South Africa has had 73 days of load shedding since the beginning of January 2022.
Source: Fin 24
