Business Chamber slams stage 6 load shedding

Eskom has chosen possibly the “worst time” to declare stage 6 load shedding, the Pietermaritzburg and Midlands Chamber of Business said on Wednesday.

The business community was shocked by the power utility’s announcement that it was moving to stage 6 effective from 12 pm on Wednesday.

ALSO READ | Eskom’s load shedding hits stage 6

CEO Melanie Veness said every South African was trying to recover following the number of challenges in some parts, including KwaZulu-Natal, during the course of the year.

“For Eskom to have declared and implemented stage 6 load shedding — factories are trying to fill year-end orders and retailers are in the middle of the festive season. Everyone is trying to recover. It is honestly disastrous for our economy. If they continue doing this, the power utility won’t have any customers and our unemployment rate will be through the roof.”

I realise that they have to protect the grid, but they can’t do that and also limit their spend on diesel. The government must fund the required diesel bill to keep the lights on.
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Energy analyst Ted Blom said he was not surprised by the “setback” because Eskom has done nothing to resolve its operational issues.

Blom said the Koeberg Unit 1 will be shut down today for six months.

“The Eskom boss makes promises he cannot implement. There is more than 28 000 MW which is lying there in Eskom, it’s not operational. This is a national disgrace. You can’t keep on operating a machine while you are trying to fix it at the same time. To alleviate this problem, you need 1 000 MW every three weeks and you need about 6 000 MW to stabilise and fix the grid.”

Just recently, former Eskom generation executive Rhulani Mathebula listed nine issues that are a problem and dragging the utility to the bottom. Poor planning, shoddy work, fraud, corruption, lack of skills, fuel and budget are among the many problems that are drowning Eskom.
The CEO Andre de Ruyter has failed dismally to improve Eskom. He has not been able to bring his plans to fruition, and it is the people who suffer. That corruption and lack of skills are noted as part of the problem is a concern.
Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha said their teams were doing everything they can to minimise the impact of load shedding.

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Among other challenges, Eskom had run out of fuel and the budget had been depleted. He said a few weeks ago Eskom had announced that it had run out of funds to buy fuel to run its open cycle gas turbines.

He said they sourced 50 million litres of fuel from PetroSA and only in the next financial year will
they be able to get a new budget for fuel. During an interview on national television yesterday, Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha said Eskom can implement up to stage 8 shedding, but their teams were doing their best to avoid the situation.

As I have said Eskom can implement up to stage 8 of loadshedding and that really depends on what happens to the units. We are reducing load shedding on Friday morning to stage 5 until Saturday morning. Stage 6 load shedding will continue to be implemented until 5 am on Friday morning, whereafter Stage 5 will be implemented until 5 am on Saturday morning. Eskom will publish a further update as soon as there are any significant changes.
He said since Tuesday night, breakdowns of two generating units at Grootvlei Power Station had occurred, as well as a unit each at Arnot, Duvha, Kendal, Kriel and Tutuka power stations. In addition, two
units at Arnot, a unit each at Camden, Kendal and Kriel power stations have been delayed in returning to service, he said.

A unit at Matla Power Station returned to service late on Tuesday night.

We currently have 4 984MW on planned maintenance, while another 19 052MW of
capacity is unavailable due to breakdowns. As previously communicated, due to the depletion of the budget to acquire diesel for the Open Cycle Gas Turbines, Eskom has been forced to strictly preserve the remaining diesel for any extreme emergency situations such as multiple, simultaneous trips of generators.
He said the pumped storage dam levels also need to be replenished during this load shedding.

The refuelling and maintenance outage starting tonight, as well as the longterm operation project of Unit 1 of the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station, together with the October chimney failure that has forced three generation units offline at Kusile Power Station, will further reduce available generation capacity and exacerbate the occurrence of load shedding over the next 6 -12 months.