Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa. Picture: GCIS
Minister of Electricity, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has emphasised the need for Eskom to strike a balance between mitigating the severity of load shedding and adhering to the constraints of the diesel budget.
Ramokgopa was updating the media on the progress made regarding the energy action plan (EAP) and provided a weekly generation outlook on Tuesday.
During the briefing, Ramokgopa said there were two major points to draw from between 8 and 22 January on Eskom’s performance in generating electricity.
The minister said capacity available was greater than peak demand in the evening.
“[If ones asks] if you are making the claim that capacity available is greater than peak demand then why are we having load shedding is because 3 000 [megawatts] of capacity available has to be drawn from the open cycle gas turbines [OCGTs] which are burning diesel… so we have reduced our consumption on diesel,” he said.
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He revealed the Eskom has not depleted its diesel budget.
Ramokgopa stressed that Eskom should find a balance in reducing the intensity of load shedding while not going over its budget.
“[Eskom] must remain within the parameters of what has been allocated. The financial year still has two or three months so it’s important that in terms for their own projections they don’t get to exhaust that because someone gets to pay for it and that somebody will be the end consumer,” the minister said.
Furthermore, Ramokgopa said that progress was being made on planned maintenance, which was “significantly high” at 8 337MW.
“So even with the scale of planned maintenance, we still have a situation where we are able to keep load shedding at [lower] levels… oscillating between no load shedding to Stage 3 at the worst moment,” he explained.
The minister also said unplanned capacity loss factor (units that keep tripping) has been consistently averaging below 14 000MW during the summer period, which meant that the country’s grid was improving.
READ MORE: Blackouts: Eskom struggle still continues
“That’s the invaluable work that the team has been doing on the planned maintenance side and you can see that there’s rewards when the units are returning,” he said.
“We have really turned the corner and I’m not suggesting that we have ended load shedding, I’m simply saying that there’s light at the end of the tunnel and it’s not an oncoming train but essentially it’s a system whose health continues to improve at levels that even exceeded our projections and expectations,” the minister continued.
Ramokgopa, however, pointed out that partial load losses (units running at lower speed or load) required urgent attention, which currently stood at 6 700MW.
“It is our collective view, the team in generation, that we can do much better here.”
The minister added: “As we return the units from planned maintenance, we are going to see that when we towards the end of February a lot of these units would have comeback. The situation really looks bright [but] we are not out of the woods yet.”
Earlier, Ramokgopa confirmed that the Koeberg nuclear power station’s unit 1 was now operating to its full capacity.
The unit 1 returned to service last November, almost a year after it was taken offline.
“The Koeberg unit is now at 100% power and has been synchronised. That’s major milestone in the quest for us to ensure that we get extension of life [out] of this unit,” he said.
The minister said the unit 1 was now generating 27MW of electricity more than before.
Unit 2 at the nuclear power plant is also out of service until September 2024. The unit’s steam generators will be replaced.
The replacement forms a key part of Eskom’s application to the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) for authourisation to extend Koeberg’s operation for another 20 years.
The licences for both units, which generate 900MW each, will expire in July this year.
“We should be able to keep to our plan to return unit 2 to service at the period we committed to,” Ramokgopa said.
Regarding the units at Kusile Power Station in Mpumalanga, Ramokgopa said unit 1, 2 and 3 had returned to service after repair works to the permanent stacks, thus, bringing a total of 3 200MW onto the grid.
This comes after the successful synchronisation of Kusile’s unit 5.
The minister further said progress was also being made to return Medupi Power Station’s unit 4 to service by the end of August.
He indicated that a second hand generator, which has 15 years of life left, has been procured abroad and will be used at Medupi.
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“[The generator] is on its way to South Africa. We are expecting that the delivery would have reached us by 24th of February and then we will assemble it. We are expecting to return this unit around August of this year. So essentially, we have reduced the return date of unit 4 by over a year and we will have an additionally 800 megawatts.”
Meanwhile, South Africa is experiencing Stage 1 load shedding, which kicked in at 11am on Tuesday due to low electricity demand and the expected earlier return to service of two units.
Stage 1 will remain in place until 4pm, thereafter, Stage 2 load shedding will be implemented until further notice, Eskom said.
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