By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
President Cyril Ramaphosa says Eskom warned years ago that they needed money to fix, build and maintain the national power grid.
“Now it is costing us double,” he said.
Speaking to reporters on Saturday, on the sidelines of the ANC Letsema campaign, in Philippi, Ramaphosa said there were various issues plaguing Eskom, including elements of sabotage.
“There can’t be a time frame when you are dealing with a broken system. You need to repair the broken system. It’s been like this for quite a long time”, he said.
The president said Eskom’s problems were multi-faceted.
“It’s got many parts to it. It’s got skills-based to it, it’s got machines to it, flawed designs of power stations. It’s got various aspects and it’s also got an element of sabotage,” said Ramaphosa.
Eskom says it has experienced more breakdowns and unusually high demand, and has thus been forced to extend stage 5 load shedding until further notice.
The group previously planned to move to stage 2 load shedding on Sunday (11 December).
Adding to the stress on the grid, the group said that Koeberg Unit 1 had been taken offline this morning for planned refuelling and routine maintenance.
The refuelling and maintenance outage of Koeberg unit 1, together with the chimney failure during October that has forced three generation units offline at Kusile Power Station, will further reduce available generation capacity and exacerbate the occurrence of load shedding during the next 6 – 12 months, Eskom said.
The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy this week announced that it had signed 13 new power generation agreements to bring close to 1,800MW online over the next few years.
The projects are part of the country’s Bid Window 5, and are anticipated to start producing power by early 2025.
However, the country is likely to sit with prolonged levels of load shedding until then, with 1,000MW removed from the grid on Saturday through Koeberg unit 1, and approximately 3,000MW offline from various breakdowns at Kusile and Medupi.
According to Eskom’s outlook for the next year, it needs to keep breakdowns below 13,000MW to stave off the worst of load shedding, but the utility has struggled to keep outages below 16,000MW – the worst case scenario in its plans.
For access to other load shedding schedules, Eskom has made them available on loadshedding.eskom.co.za.
Smartphone users can also download the app EskomSePush to receive push notifications when load shedding is implemented, as well as the times the area you are in will be off.
Meanwhile the ANC’s national executive committee (NEC) met on Friday to receive and discuss outstanding reports from the governing party’s integrity commission, amongst other matters.
One of the matters ventilated by NEC members during the meeting was Eskom and the country’s energy crisis.
A number of ANC provincial leaders – including KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) secretary Bheki Mtolo – raised concerns about how the Eskom crisis was being managed.
They urged the Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan to replace Eskom CEO Andre De Ruyter.
The conversation around Du Ruyter’s future at Eskom comes after Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe suggested that the power utility was attempting to “overthrow state” by not dealing with load shedding.
Mantashe seemingly took a dig at De Ruyter comparing him to a “policeman” who is focused on “chasing criminals”, without a grasp of Eskom’s challenges.