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During Eskom’s quarterly system status briefing on Thursday, power company officials said load shedding is likely to persist for the near future as the plants undergo much-needed reliability maintenance.
Load shedding is expected from both stage 1 and stage 2. Most coal-fired power plants have exceeded half their operating life, resulting in a large number of breakdowns, justifying projects for maintenance and renewal of reliability until winter 2021.
COO Jan Oberholzer consistently said his colleagues were doing an “excellent job” despite the circumstances. He also emphasized that with the challenge of generation, it was equally important to strengthen and extend the transmission system; a loss in the transmission network would be “disastrous” for South Africans, he said.
To cope with the reduced capacity, Eskom has also had to resort to using open cycle gas turbines that run on diesel, a huge expense. As a result, Eskom has exceeded its budget by R800 million, the target is R561 million.
Responding to questions about the debt, CEO Andre De Ruyter noted that with the separation of the electric power company into three entities, it is expected that most of the debt would be borne by the generation entity, and the entities of transmission and distribution would each carry a quarter. . However, Eskom is aware of the debt covenants and the decision should ensure that Eskom does not default.
De Ruyter also noted that green financiers were ready to provide financing to support Eskom’s just energy transition, to include renewable energy. Not only would the move respond to concerns about climate justice, it would also make more business sense, as the cost of renewable technologies has dropped substantially. There is a possibility of financing under concessional conditions, on the condition that Eskom decarbonizes. The appointment of financial advisers to assist in this regard is being finalized.
