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Lockdown gives Eskom breathing space, but revenues fall
SOUTH AFRICA
SOUTH Africa’s lockdown has reduced Eskom’s revenues, but at the same time has kept loadshed- ding to a minimum and allowed the company to push ahead with much-needed maintenance.
Eskom CEO André De Ruyter told Parlia- ment’s Public Enterprises Committee that Stage 1 loadshedding had taken place on only three days in the first three months of 2020, as of April 27, far below Eskom’s initial estimates of 31 days prior to the lockdown.
De Ruyter said on May 06 that coronavi- rus (COVID-19) had given Eskom a chance to implement short-term opportunity maintenance of some plants.
“We are taking advantage of the unfortunate circumstances associated with this pandemic,” said De Ruyter.
“Through our short-term maintenance efforts [we have] created additional buffer capac- ity of 2,000MW,” he said.
He said that Eskom had managed to procure 900MW of additional capacity from industrial generators and renewable independent power producers (IPPs).
The procurement of additional capacity and demand maintenance efforts have helped reduce the likelihood of loadshedding.
De Ruyter said Eskom had seen a “drastic” drop in demand of 7,500MW on average.
Meanwhile, the fall in demand, especially from major industries such as mining, meant that Eskom had seen sales plummet, De Ruyter noted.
“We will see a reduction in cash generation in April of ZAR2.5bn ($134mn),” said De Ruyter.
However, the full financial impact of COVID- 19 and its restrictions is still to be fully assessed.
De Ruyter said Eskom was unable to conduct reliability maintenance, which requires longer shutdown periods of plants.
Additionally, the restriction on the move- ments of people, particularly contractors from abroad, had also affected Eskom’s plans. This longer-term maintenance will resume when the lockdown is lifted. It could last between 12 to 18 months, said De Ruyter.
For example, technicians from France are needed to address the challenges at Koeberg, he said.
However, Eskom has had “support” from the Department of Health and the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy and is making “headway” in this regard.
He also said that Eskom had now created sep- arate boards of directors for three new unbun- dled companies, dealing with transmission, generation and transmission.
Eskom, however, is still working on sharing out ZAR450bn ($24bn) of its debt to each of the new companies, De Ruyter said.
Although De Ruyter supports unbundling, many Eskom executives, as well as workers and trade unionists, will not be keen on it and could drag their feet against the whole reform process.
Week 18 07•May•2020 w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m P7
