Page 7 - AfrElec Week 05 2022

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South Africans should brace for

more planned outages - Eskom

SOUTH AFRICA SOUTH Africa’s state-owned electricity group Kusile Power Station coming online earlier this
Eskom has warned that the country must brace month, will help.
itself for more scheduled electricity black- Eskom said it will utilise the maintenance
outs on its road to operational recovery and and refuelling outage on Unit 2 to implement
sustainability. the SGR project which entails the replacement
The struggling power utility has embarked on of the unit’s three steam generators. This opera-
a programme to claw back years of malfeasance tion is scheduled to take place over the next five
and misadministration. months, adding to the strain on the power grid.
But neglect at South Africa’s ageing coal Oberholzer said that 51 days of load-shed-
power stations means that scheduled mainte- ding were implemented since 1 April 2021,
nance to keep the power stations up and running compared to 47 days for the 2021 financial year
will put South Africa’s power grid under more ended 31 March 2021.
pressure. “The generation side of the business remains
Eskom executives reiterated at a media brief- very challenging, specifically the availability of
ing on Thursday (January 27) that these planned the coal-fired power stations due to plant unre-
outages are necessary interventions that will liability and unpredictability contributing to
deliver long-term benefits and the security of numerous breakdowns. The year-to-date Energy
energy supply. Availability Factor of 62.9% is not ideal,” Ober-
Eskom COO Jan Oberholzer warned that holzer said.
while Eskom would do what it could to limit “It is worth noting, however, that a key con-
the scheduled blackouts, it would not be at tributor to the low availability were high levels of
the expense of its reliability maintenance planned maintenance over the summer months,
programme. which rose to more than 12% of the generation
He said this programme remained key to capacity during the traditionally low demand
stabilising the performance of its unreliable coal festive season,” he explained.
fleet. But South Africa needed more power gen-
“We continue to drive our planned main- eration, the state utility said. Eskom executives
tenance programme with a focus on the effec- stressed that a structural shortfall in generation
tiveness of outages,” Oberholzer said. “This will capacity of between 4,000MW and 6,000MW
contribute to the risk of load-shedding during needed to be addressed, as Eskom is not respon-
times of capacity constraints.” sible for procurement of new generation.
André de Ruyter, Eskom’s group chief execu- Eskom group executive for transmission,
tive said that despite Eskom’s good performance Segomoco Scheppers said the majority of the
in recent weeks – particularly over the festive coal power stations are operating past the mid-
season where there were no planned outages, way of their operational life, at an average of 42
much still needs to be done for Eskom to achieve years, resulting in high levels of breakdowns.
operational sustainability. “As we continue to perform reliability main-
Key among these are the interventions to tenance and refurbishment projects to address
extend the operating life of the Koeberg Nuclear lack of power station reliability, an elevated risk
Power Station, which will see the facility operat- of load shedding remains,” Scheppers said.
ing at half its generating capacity for most of the He added that Eskom will continue to rely on
year, he said. renewable energy sources to play a significant
“Considering that the power station has been role to ease the pressure on the national grid,
largely depreciated, the steam generator replace- having contributed more than 3,500MW to the
ment (SGR) project, at a budgeted R20 billion for power system during the day in some days.
both units, will enable Koeberg to continue to “For example, on 1 November 2021, at 13:00,
deliver zero-carbon electricity at a highly com- about 19% of the country’s demand was sup-
petitive cost, making the SGR project one of the plied by renewable generation,” Scheepers said.
most financially attractive projects in the Eskom “While this is still low, we expect renewables’
portfolio.” contribution to continue rising as additional
De Ruyter said additions such as Unit 4 of the capacity is brought online.”™

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