Ramokgopa says ‘perfect storm’ resulted in intense load shedding

Minister of Electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa says the failure to plan for the “perfect storm” is to blame for the intense load shedding the country experienced this past week.

South Africans were plunged into stage 6 load shedding for the better part of last week due to freezing weather conditions in parts of country, particularly in Gauteng, which experienced one of the coldest days in over a decade.

‘Protect the grid’

Addressing the nation in a media briefing on Monday, Ramokgopa apologised for the recent increase in the rolling blackouts, but stressed it was necessary to stabilise Eskom’s grid.

“We have gone through a very difficult three days since we got a significant amount of reprieve over the past 21 days when we were able to sustain a relatively healthy performance of the units and of course we experienced a reduction in the available capacity I think starting on Thursday.

“We had to take measures that are meant to protect the grid and we went to stage 6 load shedding. So we would like to express our most sincere profuse apology for having taken you through a very difficult stage of intensive load shedding,” he said.

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The minister said higher stages of load shedding should not become a norm.

“I’m not in anyway suggesting that load shedding is acceptable, but I think the intensity of load shedding that goes beyond stage 4 is something that should become unacceptable and it is something that… from a technical point of view, we are able to avoid. I’m raising this because I know it disrupted life and businesses – especially those who are operating over the weekends.”

Elevated levels of demand

Ramokgopa said the grid remained vulnerable to breakdowns as the recent weather conditions have severely affected Eskom‘s ability to generate electricity.

The charging of inverter batteries also put more strain on the grid.

“We had parts of Gauteng experiencing snow and of course when you are given those conditions you know that you are starved of the sun… essentially cloudy conditions and therefore you’re not getting any support form your PV solar.

“So what that means is that those who have taken the initiative to install solar panels, batteries and inverters also had to draw from the grid to recharge their batteries and what that means is elevated levels of demand,” he said.

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He reaffirmed plans to find solutions to end load shedding, emphasising that generation capacity needed to be ramped up.

“The point I have been making consistently is that when we resolve the load shedding problem, our measure of the degree to which we are able to stand before the public and say load shedding has been resolved has little to do with summer conditions, but it has everything to do with our ability to meet demand that is 34 000 megawatts [MWs] which is the peak we had projected for winter.

“Our task is two fold and the first one is that in the shortest space of time we end load shedding and then make it possible that we are creating additional capacity so that as we enter the next winter season you have got sufficient generating capacity to be able to meet those winter conditions,” the minister continued.

Watch the briefing below:

Offline units, boiler tube leaks

Ramokgopa also indicated that the increased load shedding could be attributed to some units not recovering as expected.

He said these units being offline and the failure to plan for the “perfect storm” resulted in a reduced electricity generation capacity.

“As demand has surged to higher levels of about 32 000MW, the [energy] availability has gone down because more units have failed and hose units we thought would come back [online] to provide some relief did not come back on time.”

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The minister, however, said at least 14 units (two units with 1 305MWs and 12 units with 5438MWs) will return online between the 14 and 18 August.

“That is going to boost our performance going into the future,” Ramokgopa said.

Another area of concern for Ramokgopa is boiler tube leaks, which remained a major cause of unplanned outages.

“That is a persistent failure we are experiencing across [all] power stations so it’s an area of technical shortfall that requires our collective attention. Of course, there are a multiplicity of reasons that has do sometimes with the quality of coal… you just need to understand what are the operational parameters to really understand what the root causes are,” the minister added.