Page 7 - AfrElec Week 43 2021

AfrElec ESKOM AfrElec

Eskom’s ageing fleet still not

receiving needed maintenance

SOUTH AFRICA SOUTH Africa’s struggling power utility Eskom Eskom group executive for generation Phillip
apologised to South Africans on Monday, Octo- Dukashe said that the OCGT bill stood at a mas-
ber 25, as a new round of blackouts left South sive ZAR2.5bn and that this ate away at money
African without power. It blamed mainte- needed for the maintenance of its plants.
nance lags as the main reason for the outages, He said the utility had so far this year pro-
as its fleet of power plants dealt with a string of duced 772 GWh with its own OCGTs, against
breakdowns. a provision for the full year of 211 GWh. This
Eskom said in its quarterly system update that indicates a load factor of 7.3% at year-end against
it was concerned about the progress of mainte- a target of 1%.
nance that had to keep its ageing plants up and Oberholzer noted that, so far this year, it had
running. Some of the plants were 41 years old experienced 342 unit trips against a target of 196,
and showing their age. 4,612 MW of load losses against a target of 3,969
Eskom’s chief operating officer Jan Oberhol- MW and 23.1% unplanned load losses against a
zer admitted that its “reliability maintenance” target of 18%.
was slow going. Eskom has budgeted ZAR8.5bn
($563mn) in the current financial year for run- Struggling Tutuka
ning maintenance and a further ZAR8bn for Dukashe admitted that the Tutuka power plant
outages, but this had not borne the expected was a great cause for concern, and was in a
fruit. shocking state. Tutuka has been the single big-
On October 24, Eskom’s plant availability gest contributor to unplanned breakages so far
was at a mere 58.5%, as against a target of 70%. this year, he said.
The average so far for the current financial year In the update Eskom announced it had sus-
is 65.3%, which compares poorly with the previ- pended several employees at its Tutuka power
ous year’s 67.9%. station – one of the plants experiencing break-
Because the power grid was constantly downs – and that possible arrests could not be
constrained, Eskom could only complete 18 of ruled out due to the “shocking state of neglect”
its scheduled 84 outages for the year to do the that has largely contributed to the drop in
necessary maintenance. A further nine were in availability.
progress. Another 22 have been deferred to later Three major incidents have jointly further
in this financial year and ten to the next financial reduced the available generation capacity by
year, which leaves 25 remaining. more than 2,000 MW at Tutuka.
Dukashe explained severe challenges to the
Burning expensive diesel reliability maintenance programme that is aimed
To keep the lights on Eskom has resorted to at correcting years of neglect and over-utilisation
burning diesel at its open-cycle gas-turbine of the generation fleet.
(OCGT) plants. The usage this year alone has He said the generation fleet remained unreli-
been extensive. able and unpredictable.™

Week 43 28•October•2021 www. NEWSBASE .com P7