By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
State owned power utility Eskom says that load shedding will be pushed up to stage 4 on Thursday (30 March) as the grid comes under more pressure.
Stage 2 load shedding will continue as planned from 16h00 on Wednesday through to Thursday morning, thereafter, stage 3 load shedding will be implemented.
This will be followed by stage 4 load shedding on Thursday evening until Friday morning, where stage 3 will continue into the weekend.
Eskom said that breakdowns are currently at 15,089MW of generating capacity, while generating capacity out of service due to planned maintenance increased to 7,147MW.
Over the past 24 hours, a generation unit was returned to service at Duvha Power Station.
In the same period, a generating unit each at Lethabo, Kendal and Kriel were taken offline for repairs.
The delays in returning a unit to service at Hendrina, Medupi, and two units at Tutuka have added to the capacity constraints, Eskom said.
Five Open Cycle Gas Turbines (OCGTs) at Ankerlig Power Station were taken out of service this morning for a planned upgrade of their control system.
Work on the Koeberg plant north of Cape Town has stalled and is running weeks late, adding to energy shortages that have led to daily power cuts to protect the system from a complete blackout.
The stations was initially expected to be back up and running in June in time for winter; however, this has now been pushed back as far as September.
This means that pressure will be on Eskom’s grid during the winter months, with analysts warning that load shedding will be escalated – possibly beyond the schedules currently available.
According to Alan Winde, premier of the Western Cape province a delay in completing maintenance at Eskom’s sole nuclear power station is worrying as South Africa heads into winter.
The premier met last weekend with South African Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, who mentioned that a foreign investor has expressed interest in establishing a 3,000-megawatt gas-fired plant in the Western Cape.
The proposal is still at an early stage, and if it goes ahead, fuel could possibly be brought to the plant site via a pipeline from Saldanha Bay, 155 kilometres north of Cape Town, Winde said.
Meanwhile the City of Cape Town will raise the feed-in tariff for households and businesses selling power back to its grid by 10.15%, Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis has said.
The mayor on Wednesday delivered Cape Town’s budget speech before the council. The R69.9 billion budget targets spending in specific areas such as infrastructure, water and sanitation and energy.
The budget to end load shedding over the next three years is R2.3 billion, he said.
“This amount includes R220 million over this three-year period on independent power purchases, as well as R288 million for our Power Heroes programme to incentivise Capetonians to use less power at peak times to help prevent load-shedding stages,” Hill-Lewis said.
About R53 million of the budget will also go toward boosting the rollout of rooftop solar PV through the feed-in tariff. “Cape Town is also proud to be the first city in the country to offer households and businesses cash for their excess rooftop solar power. And I am pleased to announce that we are proposing to raise this feed-in tariff by 10.15%,” Hill-Lewis said.
The current tariff approved by the National Energy Regulator of South Africa is 78.98c/kWh. The city’s incentive (on top of the tariff) of 25c/kWh remains as it is.
“This makes solar even more attractive. We want as many residents and businesses as possible to help us end load shedding over time, and there are no limits to how much power you can sell us,” Hill-Lewis said.
So far, the excessive load shedding and the city’s own policy changes have seen a record amount of solar PV applications and installations.