Cape Town - Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown has dismissed concerns that the escalating power generation problems facing Eskom meant that the country was edging closer to a total blackout.
“Load shedding at stage 3 shows the seriousness of the constraints that we face, but it is in no way an indication that we are close to a blackout,” Brown told reporters in Cape Town on Wednesday.
Speaking at a hastily convened media briefing on the state of the electricity grid, Brown said Eskom was forced to move into stage 3 load shedding on Tuesday after technical faults led to the unplanned shutdown of more power plants.
Her office had put out an advisory about her plan to address the media two hours before the briefing.
But Brown provided no tangible proof to back up her assertion that a total blackout was not imminent.
Repeated warning
Speaking in her usual combative tone, Brown repeated her previous warning that South Africans should brace themselves for more power cuts to last for the next two years. In a sign of the severity of Eskom’s problems, the power utility announced yesterday afternoon that it had once again been forced to ratchet up the power cuts by instituting another stage 3 of load shedding.
Stage 3 power cuts are meant to take off up to 4 000 megawatts of power to prevent the grid from total collapse.
Brown’s comments provided little comfort as work at Eskom’s newest Medupi power station in Limpopo was again disrupted by violence, which would now add further delays to the completion of the plant.
Eskom’s problems, along with the recent spate of violence against foreign nationals from other African countries, have compounded the challenges facing the government as its struggles with ways to boost growth.
Brown said she was aware of the impact that the electricity interruptions were having on the economy, but the power cuts were necessary to avoid the total collapse of the grid.
But just minutes after Brown announced that Eskom had lost 9 500MW of electricity due to unplanned outages, the utility announced that it was taking out up to 4 000MW of capacity to stabilise the grid. Just this week alone, Eskom has had two back-to-back Stage 3 power cuts – on Tuesday and Wednesday. The last time Eskom was forced to implement back-to-back Stage 3 cuts was in December.
“We understand the consequences of load shedding on business activity, employment and productivity and wish to assure the public, consumers and all players in our economy that we are working tirelessly to ensure that we have adequate electricity supply,” Brown said.
She said she planned to make new appointments to the Eskom board. The utility has both an acting chairman and chief executive. Zola Tsotsi was ousted as chairman last month, while chief executive Tshediso Matona was suspended along with three other executives pending an inquiry.
Industry hurt
Shaun Nel, a spokesperson for the Energy Intensive User Group of Southern Africa, said the latest round of power cuts, coming at such short notice, was having a “massive impact” on the country’s biggest energy consumers, especially the mining industry.
“Stage 2 load shedding gives our members a lot more flexibility, but stage 3 load shedding is a lot more problematic,” Nel added.
Eskom attributed the power cuts on Wednesday to extra units being taken out of service for unplanned maintenance caused by technical faults.
The utility warned that further cuts were in the pipeline.
“Any additional changes on the already vulnerable and constrained power system could lead to a change in the stage of load shedding at short notice.”
It also emerged on Wednesday that Eskom’s Medupi power station remained closed as unions had snubbed its gesture to rehire 1 700 workers who had been on strike for almost a month now. The turmoil at Medupi could delay the start-up of the power station’s first of six units.
The National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) said its members unanimously resolved not to go back to work as they were unhappy with the outcome of the talks with Eskom.
“We will continue to engage Eskom and contractors to find a lasting solution in the best interests of our members,” Numsa spokesman Castro Ngobese said.
The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) blamed the violence and intimidation on inter-union rivalry.
“The NUM is appealing to all those who think their rights are more important than others to please respect the rights of others,” the union’s Livhuwani Mammburu said.
“The violent strike this morning at Medupi power station has got an element of what happened in the platinum sector in August 2012,” he added, referring to the rivalry between the NUM and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union at Marikana in the North West where 44 people died.
The department’s acting director-general Matsietsi Mokholo said the inquiry into the utility’s affairs would also look into the R225 billion funding gap that it had reported back in 2013. “We hope the inquiry can give us at least a definite sense of the extent of the shortfall.” – Additional reporting by Babalo Ndenze and Justin Brown