By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Eskom chief executive officer Andre de Ruyters says the country will need to spend close to R1.2 trillion by 2030 to ensure it has enough generation, transmission and distribution capacity to meet the demand.
Presenting at the Africa Renewable Energy Investment Summit on Wednesday, the embattled Eskom chief said that renewable energy is the quickest and most cost-effective way to resolve the country’s crisis.
Compared to coal, renewable projects like wind and solar farms cost less to build, can come online in less than two years, and can ensure that the country can protect its power exports amid rising carbon tariffs.
In contrast to this, de Ruyter noted that new coal builds would come at double or even quadruple the cost, take up to 12 years to complete – which would result in even more load shedding – and would put 46% of South Africa’s exports at risk as the country would fail to decarbonise.
De Ruyter stressed that South Africa is running out of time to act. Already in 2022, one of Eskom’s coal plants is at or beyond its end-of-life status, with 1,000MW scheduled to go offline. Carbon emissions across the fleet also remain high.
By 2035, however, nine plants will be at end-of-life, with 19,000MW going offline, putting 55,000 jobs at risk. By 2050, 12 plants will be offline, pulling 33,000MW off the grid.
Eskom’s proposed solution to this is to lean heavily into renewable energy and other planned projects. By the end of 2024, de Ruyter said that most of the 33,000MW shortfall will be covered by new projects, including:
- 3,500MW from the Seriti renewables projects
- 1,440MW from Kusile entering full operation
- 2,000MW from independent power producers (IPPs) on leased land
- 3,500MW from new pumped storage
- 1,500MW from municipal procurement
- 2,600MW from REIPPP 5 projects
- 5,200MW from REIPPP 6 projects
- 7,000+MW from other projects
This energy shift is not cheap, however, with the CEO pointing out that R1.2 trillion will be needed to realise the transition.
Adding firm capacity of 7,000MW, variable capacity from renewables totalling 50,000MW and storage capacity of 10,000MW will cost approximately R990 billion to realise by 2035, he said.
Expanding and strengthening the power utility’s transmission network over 8,000km of new lines and installing 101 new substations will cost another R130 billion. Boosting the distribution capacity will add another R56 billion to the mix.
Much of Eskom will change, he said, with the group needing to repurpose its facilities, reskill its workforce and also create entirely new industries – all while decarbonising and meeting international requirements for carbon emissions.
Eskom meanwhile has announced that stage 3 and stage 4 load shedding will continue to be implemented until Saturday.
Stage 3 load shedding will be implemented between 00h00 and 16h00, escalating to stage 4 between 16h00 and 00h00 every day until Saturday, the group said.
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.