Eskom COO says the need for load-shedding in winter has been reduced
Eskom's chief operating officer, Jan Oberholzer, has said that there is a probability of three days of Stage 1 load-shedding during winter, an improvement from the previous forecast of 31 days of Stage 1 load-shedding.
Eskom provided details of the company’s operational performance and the system outlook for the winter period during the status of the power system during a briefing on 21 May.
Eskom group chief executive, André de Ruyter revealed that despite facing major challenges in the past four months, Eskom has seen good progress in the five key elements of the organisation’s turnaround plan. These are achieving operational stability, improving income statements, strengthening the balance sheet, embarking on organisational restructuring, and inculcating a high-performance culture.
De Ruyter explained that owing to the short-term opportunity maintenance that was implemented, taking advantage of the reduced demand during the Covid-19 national lockdown, Eskom was able to achieve 30 000 megawatts available capacity without the use of the open-cycle gas turbines on 20 May.
“While the generation plant performance still demonstrates unpredictability and unreliability, there has been some improvement in the energy availability factor (EAF), with a marginal increase, from 64 per cent in March 2020 to 65 per cent in April 2020,” said De Ruyter.
Eskom chief operating officer, Jan Oberholzer indicated that by the second week of April, maintenance increased by about 63 per cent from 3 600 megawatts, prior to the national lockdown, to 9 800 megawatts. Meanwhile, 6 776 megawatts capacity is currently being maintained against a pre-lockdown plan of 4 200 megawatts.
“Based on this level of maintenance, the system outlook shows that there is a probability of three days of Stage 1 load-shedding during winter, an improvement from the previous forecast of 31 days of Stage 1 load-shedding. However, due to the unreliability and unpredictability of the system, the risk of load-shedding remains for the next 18 months, until at least August 2021, as we continue to implement reliability maintenance on the power generation plant,” explained Oberholzer.
Eskom group executive for generation, Bheki Nxumalo, stated that the organisation has optimised open-cycle gas turbines (OCGT) usage, with a total spend of R4.3 billion against the provision of R6.98 billion in the 2020 financial year, a saving of about 38 per cent. Nxumalo gave an update that a total of 1 384, or 75 per cent of the 1 852 critical positions which were addressed as part of the Generation 9-Point Recovery Programme (or the 9-Point Plan), have been filled as at end of April 2020. In addition, all power station general managers and Tier 1 manager positions have been filled.
Nxumalo concluded, “While we don’t expect to implement load-shedding this winter, the risk of load-shedding does remain, but we endeavour to keep South Africans informed timeously in the event that load-shedding cannot be avoided.”
Eskom continues to appeal to customers to use electricity sparingly to avoid or limit the magnitude of load-shedding.
