We are dreaming of a bright Christmas

Load shedding had touched a raw nerve among South Africans, President Cyril Ramaphosa said during his apology to the nation and said Eskom would be keeping the lights on between December 17 and January 13.

“Many of our power stations are an average of 37 years old, with some of them being 55 years old,” Ramaphosa said.

“The new ones (Kusile and Medupi) are also giving us enormous challenges.”

One of the proposals to increase capacity to about 5,000MW “if we are to have the system stabilised” was to have offshore generators.

“It will be very expensive but it will be examined,” Ramaphosa said, noting “self-generation” was also an option.

“We have been assured by management they are going to stabilise the system and embark on a recovery plan and that between December 17 leading into January and even beyond that, as we are working on all the requests we have made we will be able to have no load shedding during that period,” Ramaphosa said, noticeably stumbling over the “no load shedding” phrase.

Ramaphosa also said all leave had been cancelled for Eskom employees.

Eskom group executive of generation Bheki Nxumalo said a number of units had been brought back online.

“On top of that, some of our big units which were down for maintenance over July/August will also be coming back,” Nxumalo said.

Koeberg would also be coming back online mid-January, with Nxumalo noting the units which were coming online were highly reliable and “robust”.

Bernard Magoro, general manager for system operations at Eskom, said it was important to note Eskom was still in recovery mode.

“This is why we were able to step down from Stage four [on Tuesday] to stage two [yesterday],” Mogoro said.

On Monday, Magoro said the system should be more stable, with demand dropping over the weekend.

However, Energy Expert Coalition’s Clyde Mallinson despaired at the suggestion of offshore gas generators being used.

“In 2014, the Development Bank of South Africa put out a request for information on how much they should pay people to drop 5,000MW of consumption for 14 hours a day to allow Eskom to undertake deep maintenance,” Mallinson said.

“I proposed that instead of whatever they were thinking of paying people not to use electricity, if they subsidised me I could build 5,000MW of new capacity so that instead of sucking it out of the economy we could put it into the economy.”

Five years later, said Mallinson, and Eskom was looking for 5,000MW again.

“I don’t believe you can bring in gas barges on an emergency basis in under six months unless there’s a couple floating around like floating Ubers,” Mallinson said.

“I’ve heard stories the guys would only come in if they had a five-year contract and were paid around R5 per kilowatt/hour.

“Running the diesel generators costs Eskom around R4/kWh, so Eskom is saving itself R4kWh at the expense of R100kWh to the economy. They don’t have money for diesel so we’re being load shed instead.”

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