There is a high risk of load-shedding on Thursday and Friday this week, while the probability of load-shedding remains medium up to December 15.
“We will be using the current week until December 15, to undertake even more maintenance than usual,” says Matona.
“The prognosis for load-shedding will be low to medium from after December 15 until mid-January 2015, should no additional risks occur on the system.
However, beyond January and up to the end of March, numerous load-shedding days (up to 36) could become a reality.
“Load-shedding is going to continue, so we urge the public to learn how to read load-shedding schedules, to keep them handy and plan ahead.
“I don’t think there’s a crisis at Eskom,” he adds – but he admitted there were challenges.
“When we start going to blackouts, then I will say there is a crisis.
“We thank all South Africans who have rallied to the call to reduce their energy consumption. We call on you again in the summer months to live lightly by reducing demand from 6am to 10pm,” says Matona.
“Eskom will continue to drive its maintenance plan. In order to protect the system, costly open cycle gas turbines may be used beyond budget under emergency conditions.
“This situation has not been easy for employees, yet many have gone beyond the call of duty and sacrificed critical family time to service South Africa.
“Our responsibility is to ensure that we do not compromise the power system, therefore, we will continue to safeguard and protect South Africa’s power system and will implement load-shedding if absolutely necessary.”
He apologises to the nation for the inconvenience of the past few weeks due to load-shedding.
“We have communicated for an extended period to South Africa that the power system is extremely constrained and vulnerable.
With the system being tight, any abnormal event pushes us into load-shedding.
“At times like these, with the reserve margin being low, we do not have enough capacity to meet demand, necessitating the need for planned, controlled and rotational load-shedding, in order to protect the power system from a total countrywide blackout.
“Over the last few months we have seen a significant increase in unplanned maintenance and breakdowns hat has had a compounded negative effect on power system reliability.”
He also says that some of Eskom’s current installed base-load capacity plants are past their midlife, requiring longer outages and extended restoration time than planned, while declining coal quality impacts plant performance with the result of additional maintenance being required.
“Eskom is, however, in a better position since 2008 to manage the situation, in terms of experience, skills and processes.
“While certain things are beyond our control such as the impact of weather conditions on our plant, we need to take responsibility for other factors that are in our control.”
Regarding restoration times of power, he adds that power has to be restored manually in certain areas, while unplanned technical errors sometimes occur resulting in longer outages.
“Ekurhuleni has developed three-hour schedules since they do not have a remote controlled network, while operators must be dispatched to disconnect and reconnect networks manually.
“The three-hour choice is thought to be, for them, the ideal balance between the time needed to switch and the shortest down time for customers.”
