Eskom in dire straits – SA should expect a bleak December

With Eskom’s state of the system update expected today, the struggling power utility’s grid continues to tremble, with its “likely risk scenario” reflecting the current round of load shedding is predicted to last until at least 19 December.

Stage 3

The country was bumped up to stage 3 load shedding last night.

This was revealed in Eskom‘s weekly system status report intended to provide a general picture of the adequacy of the national electricity supply system in the medium term.

The system operator is responsible for ensuring the stability of the national electricity grid is maintained by balancing supply with demand, and a three-month outlook on the forecast demand versus available generating capacity indicated constrained capacity.

Report

The report claimed the values were unverified and could change at any time.

At the beginning of October, the “contracted forecast” was at 32 412 megawatts with the residual forecast at 30 308MW, available capacity at 29 296MW and unplanned outage assumption (UA) at 1 200MW. Later, the forecast was 31 872MW, its residual forecast 29 689MW and UA 1 200MW.

The contracted load forecast was the total official day-ahead hourly forecast and residual load forecast excluded the expected generation from renewables.

The actual residual demand was the aggregated metered hourly sent-out generation and imports from dispatchable resources inclusive of demand reductions.

Near the end of December, it was predicted there would be 29 318MW contracted forecast demand with available capacity at 25 994MW and unplanned outage assumption at 1 200 MW.

Expert weighs in

Energy analyst Clyde Mallinson said this was not shocking and Eskom was in “dire straits”.

“I wish they would have not allowed the situation to get to this point,” he said.

According to Mallinson it was frightening when at the end of September, Eskom put a status report for the next 52 weeks to the parliamentary portfolio committee on energy where it had a base-case scenario of outages (best case) of +1 500MW and +3 000MW.

The base case was 4 000 to 5 000MW under planned maintenance and 13 000MW under unplanned.

He said the medium case was that 14 500MW were broken instead of 13 000MW and the high-risk or worst scenario would be unplanned outages exceeded 16 000MW, where load shedding would be stage 3 and on occasion stage 4.

“This was what they called the ‘likely risk’ scenario. Eskom was anticipating stage 3 load shedding for the next 52 weeks in the submission they made to the committee,” he said.

Mallinson said the problem with that document was it showed, in order to keep it at stage 3 level, they had their open cycle gas turbines (OCGT) burning R60 billion-worth of diesel.

Eskom’s budget

“Yet the Eskom budget for 2022 for diesel is around R7 billion to R8 billion.

“If you then assume much less running of the diesel OCGT fleet, the maximum load shedding values go up, as well as the days of load shedding,” he said.

Mallinson said Eskom could not run OCGTs on diesel 24/7 because it could not get diesel quickly enough even if it did have an unlimited budget.

Depletion of its emergency reserves meant Eskom had run out of diesel and run out of water pumps needed to generate power.

“We have no reserve margin available from our coal fleet and it is running flat out. All the reserves are made out of diesel and water [the pump storage].”

High levels of breakdowns

Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha said the stage 3 load shedding from yesterday was “mainly due to high levels of breakdowns, as well as depleted emergency generation reserves.

“Stage 2 load shedding will be implemented from 5am until 4pm [today], with a return to stage 3 at 4pm. This schedule will repeat until further notice,” he said

Outlook for December bleak

Energy specialist Lungile Mashele said the outlook for December was bleak.

Demand would decrease from 16 December as industry and mines closed but cautioned Eskom’s system was unpredictable.

“Eskom‘s situation will get worse due to planned decommissioning schedules, a lack of maintenance and a lack of money,” she said.

“The National Energy Regulator of South Africa tariff adjudication may just save Eskom if their RCA [regulatory clearing account] is liquidated in the tariff increase.”

The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research yesterday released statistics on load shedding during the first half of 2022.

Downhill from March

The year started out okay, but it went downhill from March, as revealed by the hourly distribution data of load shedding.

In September, data gleaned from EskomSePush app confirmed SA had exceeded 100 days of load shedding (just over 2 400 hours).

ALSO READ: Stage 3 load shedding implemented today as emergency reserves run out

– Additional reporting by Cheryl Kahla.

– lungas@citizen.co.za