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Eskom CEO André de Ruyter has explained what to expect in terms of continued blackouts over the next year.
Speaking at the utility’s system status briefing on Oct. 22, De Ruyter said a number of factors have led to a significant risk of loss of load over the next year.
He said that major maintenance is underway, that design flaws are being fixed at Medupi and Kusile, and the results of this are promising.
“All of this will contribute to a radical change in the availability of our generation system for April of next year,” said De Ruyter. “But this is still not enough to completely eliminate the risk of loss of load.”
“There is more work to be done, but we anticipate that by September next year, we will have been able to significantly reduce, but not eliminate, the risk of cargo loss going forward.”
This means that load reduction will remain a threat for most of 2021, and any major disruption to the national power grid will likely result in the need to impose continuous blackouts across the country.
The load shedding forecast can be summarized as follows:
- Now – April 2021 – Risk of loss of load
- April 2021 – Step change in generation capacity
- April 2021 – September 2021 – The risk of loss of load remains during the winter period
- September 2021 – Reduced risk of loss of load
Eskom’s generation division cautioned that the public is being warned to expect increased risk of loss of load until the end of 2021 while maintaining reliability.
System status
Eskom COO Jan Oberholzer noted that Eskom was forced to implement load shedding in July, August and September this year, which he said was mainly due to high levels of unplanned losses in the entire generation fleet.
These were compounded by the following losses:
- Excursions – Up to 4,000 MW
- Camden Unavailability – 1,300 MW
- Koeberg Unit 2 Ourage – 920MW
- Medupi and Kusile unavailability – 1,700 MW
These factors were experienced in excess of the anticipated 11,000 MW unplanned power losses across the entire generation fleet that Eskom assumed would occur during the winter.
Oberholzer echoed De Ruyter’s assessment of the importance of solving design flaws at the Medupi and Kusile power plants.
“In the future, when we solve all the design problems that we have in new power plants, we will go a long way to get out of this phase and reduce the risk of loss of load,” said Oberholzer.
He also said that the risk of loss of cargo will remain until after the winter season next year.
“We are doing a lot of maintenance, and I think we will see the first change in April next year, and then it will improve until after the winter period,” said Oberholzer.
“However, until then there is still the risk of loss of load – unfortunately that is where we are.”
“We are fully confident that we can change this, we just need time,” said Oberholzer.
Losing a third of generation capacity
One of the major challenges Eskom faces is that over the next decade, the power company will lose between 8,000 and 12,000 MW as a result of the shutdown of power plants.
“It is clear that we represent a strategic risk for the country as a whole,” said De Ruyter.
“We have stepped up our reliability maintenance program to the point where we have 14% of our units in maintenance, yet we can only fix part of it.”
“The average age of our power plant fleet is 39 years old, and several of our power plants are nearing the end of their useful lives.”
These design lives are further compromised by the historical lack of significant maintenance that has been done on this infrastructure, he said.
“Therefore, we will take between 8,000 and 12,000 MW of total capacity out of service over the next decade, and that will create a capacity deficit going forward.”
The government is assisting Eskom in its ability to recoup this impending loss in power generation through the independent power purchase in the immediate future.
However, infrastructure decommissioning remains a major problem for Eskom going forward, as it will need to source a reliable new generation over the next decade.
The charts below show Eskom’s capacity outlook projections from now through March 2021, as well as its unplanned outage performance over the same period.
Capacity Outlook: October 2020 – March 2021
Unplanned cutting performance Summer 2020-2021
Now read: Eskom whistleblower writes an explosive letter to CEO André de Ruyter
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