By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
State owned power utility Eskom has announced that load shedding will be pushed to stage 4 with immediate effect following further breakdowns at its power stations.
Stage 4 load shedding will remain in effect until 05h00 on Monday (5 December), at least.
“This is to conserve the limited diesel stocks and to create space to replenish the dam levels in the pumped storage schemes,” Eskom said.
All-day load shedding has been in effect since Friday after the power utility suffered six breakdowns at its stations. Further updates are expected.
Eskom warned that the chance of load shedding occurring over the next six to 12 months will be greatly increased as it deals with key units being off the grid.
“The imminent refuelling and maintenance outage, as well as the long-term operation project of Unit 1 of the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station, together with the October chimney failure that has forced three generation units offline at Kusile Power Station, will further reduce available generation capacity and significantly increase the occurrence of loadshedding during the next six to twelve months,” it siad.
“Eskom requests the public to exercise patience and tolerance during this difficult period
Eskom recently published its Week 47 outlook for the grid, saying that it expects to have enough capacity over the festive seasons to stage off load shedding for Christmas and New Year’s eve.
However, this comes with the sacrifice of much-needed maintenance.
Instead of the 8,956MW of generating capacity it had planned to take down for maintenance in the week of 19–25 December 2022 in the past few weeks’ system status outlooks, it now said it would only take down 6,641MW.
The difference of 2,315MW works out to about 26% less planned maintenance.
For the week of 26 December to 1 January 2023, the utility will now be subjecting only 7,537MW of capacity to planned maintenance, compared to 10,806MW in the outlook from Week 46.
That means it will take down 3,269MW less than it had planned — a reduction of 30%.
Meanwhile the power utility is also disappointed by the level of attention being given to high-profile cases of theft and sabotage, given their serious impact on the country. Eskom’s general manager of security, Karen Pillay, said that prosecutors are unavailable after hours, magistrates are unwilling, and suspects get meagre bail sums.
“We’ve had to extend support in the sense that we’ve put watching briefs on some of the cases, where we contract legal experts to guide some of these prosecutors, and even the investigative teams on specific matters,” said Pillay.
Pillay’s grievances come shortly after Eskom CEO André de Ruyter said he’s questioning the criminal justice system’s commitment to combating crimes against the state after the recent arrest and subsequent release of an alleged coal thief by the Belfast magistrate’s court.
This also included the fact that the perpetrator who sent a bomb threat to Eskom COO Jan Oberholzer in May was released on R2,000 bail by the Witbank magistrate’s court on Monday on a charge of contravening the Explosives Act.
De Ruyter said threats to staff have dramatically increased since the power utility started clamping down on sabotage and corruption. Station managers are now wearing bulletproof vests to work, and de Ruyter says more must be done by authorities to help Eskom fight against crime.
Over the past couple of months alone, several truck drivers have been arrested for stealing coal, two security guards for stealing close to R150,000 worth of diesel and a maintenance worker for sabotaging one of its units at the Camden power station.
All of these incidents can be seen as direct sabotage of Eskom’s operability, as each results in either a huge financial loss or actual physical damage to the country’s power stations, which exacerbates the ongoing energy crisis and keeps South African citizens and businesses in the dark.