Durban — An energy expert has advised South Africans and businesses to make alternative plans because the country could experience Stages 4 to 5 load shedding or worse.
Hilton Trollip, a research fellow in the Global Risk Governance programme and a senior researcher at the Energy Research Centre at the University of Cape Town, said “we could experience Stage 4 to 5 load shedding or worse”.
President Cyril Ramaphosa could also remove energy from the Department of Mineral Resources, he said, adding that energy could become its own department like before, so that it can focus on important issues.
“If the Mineral Resources and Energy minister keeps on postponing getting the extra energy generation, the problem will not be fixed,” said Trollip.
He was speaking after Eskom’s announcement at a virtual media briefing on Sunday that its recovery plan was expected to bear fruit in about two years. This means the country will continue to experience load shedding over the next two years.
Chairperson of the new Eskom board Mpho Makwana said the key levers to successful recovery of the Eskom fleet is fixing the systemic issues troubling the organisation – leadership, organisational culture and poor internal controls required to operate the power utility.
Makwana said in the past 112 days, the Eskom board had more than 50 meetings of the various committees of the board. The plant performance recovery plan, which is in the final stages of being approved by the government, will be driven vigorously, and an external project management company will assist the board in stress-testing and monitoring the execution of this recovery plan.
“However, the reality is that the recovery of Eskom’s coal fleet will not be achieved within the short term. It will take at least two years to improve the Energy Availability Factor (EAF) from the current 58% to 70%.
“The turnaround plan will see a stretch target EAF being driven towards 60% by March 31, 2023 … a mere 10 weeks away, then 65% of the EAF by March 31, 2024 and 70% by March 31, 2025,” he said.
Makwana said: “The recovery plan requires that power stations be given head room to execute. We want to ensure we create some predictability by implementing some level of permanent load shedding stages between Stage 2 and 3 for the next two years to give sufficient space for maintenance, while giving the country a level of consistency to plan livelihoods better.”
Outgoing Eskom chief executive André de Ruyter said the performance of the generation fleet was unacceptable, with the EAF at less than 60%.
De Ruyter said incidents such as Medupi 4, Kusile 1-3 FGD (flue gas desulphurisation unit) challenges, the Kusile 5 air heater fire and Koeberg’s extended outage means more than 4 500MW will be offline for an extended period. The generation’s operational recovery plan is geared towards improving the EAF from the current 58% to 65% by the end of 2024, and 70% by the end of 2025.
“The target is to recover 1 862MW in 2023 and 6 000MW in the next 24 months with an intensified effort at the top six power stations. Each station has detailed its recovery plans. The tracking of related actions is being implemented and will be automated. To enable this plan, additional funding will be required for outage execution and operations,” said De Ruyter.
“To achieve this, Eskom will seek exemption from the Department of Environment, Fisheries and Forestry to temporarily operate the units while by-passing the FGDs with the temporary stacks,” he said.
Stage 2 load shedding would be implemented during the day from 5am to 4pm, whereafter Stage 1 load shedding will be implemented daily, he said.
This afternoon, Stage 4 load shedding will be implemented at 4pm to 5am. Evening load shedding will then be reduced to Stage 3 daily from Tuesday until further notice.
The DA’s mineral resources and energy spokesperson Kevin Mileham said Eskom’s announcement meant South Africa will be placed on permanent Stage 2 or 3 load shedding for the next 2 years. It is the clearest admission yet by the ANC government and Eskom that they have failed to solve the electricity crisis.
“This unprecedented step by Eskom will continue to place an onerous burden on the economy and citizens. Essentially, South Africans are being asked to stay in the dark for four hours a day while paying extortionate electricity tariffs which are due to rise by 33.77% over the next 16 months,” said Mileham.
ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba said it was clear there was no coherent plan to get the country out of this mess after nearly 15 years of load shedding began.
“This announcement directly contradicts that of President Ramaphosa and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe, who have frequently claimed load shedding would be a thing of the past in the next six to 12 months.
“The president and his sidekick are either oblivious to the truth or have blatantly lied to the nation. Either way, they clearly have no grip on this crisis and no plan to address it.”
Daily News