By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Power utility Eskom says rolling blackouts will have to be implemented again due to breakdowns few hours after suspending them.
The group said that stage 2 load shedding will be implemented from 14h00 on Saturday and will continue until further notice.
‘Breakdowns of four generating units today have forced the implementation of Stage 2 load shedding from 14h00 on Saturday. These were two units at Grootvlei and a unit each at Camden and Medupi power stations. Further, a delay in returning a generating unit to service at Lethabo Power Station has contributed to the capacity shortages,” Eskom said.
The group currently has 5,244MW on planned maintenance, while another 16,455MW of capacity is unavailable due to breakdowns.
Load shedding was downgraded to stage 1 on Friday, following stage 2 for most of the week. Load shedding was suspended last weekend for a little over a day before breakdowns forced rolling blackouts to return.
Before being suspended, Eskom was on the longest load shedding streak in history, carrying the schedules over 32 days.
Earlier this week, Eskom chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer said that the country will be dealing with persistent load shedding for at least 18 months before new generating capacity can be added to the grid.
“We need another year or year-and-a-half to get out of this,” Oberholzer said at the Agri SA conference near Johannesburg on Thursday. “We are going to go through a tough time over the next year and a half.”
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 Gold Fields offers Eskom its surplus power after building massive solar plant at South Deep.
The plant will supply 24% of its electricity, adding they are also exploring wind power as companies across the country seek to curb their reliance on state power utility Eskom.
Mining companies in South Africa face an uphill struggle to deliver on emissions reduction targets as the electricity they source from the national grid is 80% coal-generated. Electricity accounts for 93% of South Deep’s carbon emissions and 10% of its annual costs.
Investing in renewables helps miners cut emissions and save money on power, as Eskom seeks to hike power tariffs by 32% next April. Eskom regularly implements rolling power cuts, termed “loadshedding,” as it struggles to meet demand.
Gold Fields spent around 715 million rand ($39.65 million) on the vast field of solar panels near South Deep. It is expected to save the mine 124 million rand a year and reduce its annual carbon emissions by 110,000 tonnes.
The solar plant will generate 103 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity a year, about a quarter of the mine’s annual power usage, and a Gold Fields executive said the mine has contacted Eskom about selling surplus power back into the grid.
“If there’s enough people doing 50 and 100 megawatt plants around the country, you can add five gigawatts of power into the system and there’s less loadshedding,” said Martin Preece, Gold Fields’ executive vice president for South Africa.