No load shedding during Sona in Cape Town City Hall precinct

Eskom CEO Andre De Ruyter says there will be no load shedding in the Cape Town City Hall precinct for President Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address (Sona).

He was speaking during a media briefing late Monday afternoon.

This year’s Sona will be held at the Cape Town City Hall for the first time ever. De Ruyter says they have an agreement with the City of Cape Town not to cut the power to the City Hall precinct, before, during and after Sona.

But he couldn’t guarantee that the rest of the country would have power on Thursday for Ramaphosa’s address.

Eskom implements stage 2 load shedding

Eskom suddenly announced that it’s reverting to stage 2 load shedding on Monday night, less than a day after suspending last week’s rolling power cuts.

But the power utility is aiming to end power cuts by 5am on Tuesday.

Eskom said it had to reimplement load shedding because it lost a unit each at Camden, Kusile, Duvha and Matla power stations since midnight on Sunday.

There were also delays in returning a unit at Kusile and two units at Majuba power station back online.

During the past five days, Eskom replenished its emergency reserves, but the parastatal warned that if there were further breakdowns overnight, it could force Eskom to extend the load shedding beyond Tuesday morning. 

“Total breakdowns amount to 16 261MW while planned maintenance is 5 350MW of capacity as we continue with the reliability maintenance,” said Eskom.

Skills drainage and poor management at power stations

Eskom’s Group Executive for Generation Philip Dukashe, was at pains to point out that power stations were suffering due to a skills drainage.

As a result, juniorised staff working at the country’s coal-fired stations lacked the experience and mentorship to handle the type of problems presented at those problematic stations.

“It’s disappointing, gutting and tiring to be here. We are working hard to solve these problems,” said a visibly tired Dukashe.

He says the power utility is working to hire new staff and bring in contractors to assist with the workload.

Eskom COO Jan Oberholzer said the need to step up training and develop skills was apparent during his visit to Majuba.

But De Ruyter hit hard at Majuba’s general manager, saying that a lack of performance is generally a leadership problem and not a staff problem.

“The plant (Majuba) should perform if there is proper management of the power station. Philip (Dukashe) and Jan (Oberholzer) cannot be at every power station in the country,” he said.

De Ruyter warned that Eskom would be taking steps against management at power stations where there’s been poor performance.

Eskom has ruled out sabotage as a reason behind the system failures at this point.

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