Eskom: No more load shedding for now

Eskom says it doesn’t anticipate any load shedding for Tuesday night, barring any further breakdowns. The parastatal’s generation teams have been hard at work to bring additional units back online.

Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter says the country’s diesel levels are “fine” and the dam capacities are in “reasonable shape”.

“There is still some work that needs to be done at the Drakensburg pump storage facility, but I’m confident that will be done tonight (Tuesday night),” said de Ruyter.

Eskom COO Jan Oberholzer said while the parastatal’s recovery was slow, it is looking a lot better.

Oberholzer reported that a unit tripped at Grootvlei on Tuesday, but that engineers were working to bring units in Kendal and Duvha back online.

Eskom will continue with its maintenance as planned. On Wednesday, unit one at Matla Power Station and one unit at Arnot will be taken offline for repairs.

“The Matla unit will be going off for eight hours, but the Arnot repairs are more extensive, that is going to take three days,” explained Eskom’s Group Executive for Generation Philip Dukashe.

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Majuba management has a lot to answer

This past bout of load shedding that began on 2 February, was due to a lack of preparedness for the wet weather at Majuba Station.

In essence, the coal was wet again and could not be used to generate power.

Eskom said during its state of the system address last month, that it had put measures in place to mitigate the problem of coals getting wet, but this was not properly implemented at Majuba.

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The power utility’s top brass paid a visit to the plant on Sunday, and while executives were reluctant to give details, it’s apparent they’re not happy with the way Majuba plant managers handled the recent wet weather.

“The past rainy seasons hit us tremendously and there were load losses. Majuba had been hit, but we expected the readiness to be better,” said Dukashe.

“We were not able to feed coal and we lost three units. The station was not as ready for the rains, there were a number of things that should have been done and we lost close to 2000 MW,” he added.

Eskom looking forward to working with Daniel Mminele

On the appointment of Daniel Mminele to the Presidential Climate Finance Task Team, De Ruyter said he “met him a few times.”

“He is extremely well suited to the position and we look forward to working with him,” said De Ruyter.

 Mminele will lead South Africa’s efforts to mobilise finance for a just energy transition.

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