By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Several parts of Soweto are without electricity after the Zola substation caught fire on Wednesday morning, causing power outages.
According to Joburg EMS spokesperson, Robert Mulaudzi, the fire broke out about 08.30am in the morning.
Mulaudzi, said the entire substation has burned down and they don’t know what is the cause of the fire.
It has led to power outages in large parts of Soweto, including Dobsonville, Emndeni, Jabulani, Moletsane, Mofolo North, Naledi, Tladi, Zola and Zondi.
“We are working with the fire department to extinguish the fire so that our technicians can conduct an investigation and assess the extent of the damages,” Eskom said in a short statement.
“The estimated time of restoration is not available at this stage. We apologise for the inconvenience this causes.”
A fire at the Zola substation has affected electricity supply to Dobsonville, Emdeni, Jabulani, Moletsane, Mofolo North, Naledi, Tladi, Zola and Zondi. We are working with the fire department to extinguish the fire so that our technicians can conduct… pic.twitter.com/Sx2308spxx
— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) June 12, 2024
Meanwhile Eskom’s power station generating capacity recovery has been significant enough that South Africans might only experience two weeks of load-shedding in 2024.
Amid South Africa’s longest load-shedding break in nearly three years, EE Business Intelligence managing director Chris Yelland said Eskom’s plan to fix its ageing power station fleet appeared to be working.
Yelland attributed part of this improvement to National Treasury providing more money to Eskom and being more cooperative when it came to letting the utility procure parts and expertise from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).
OEMs’ direct involvement in maintaining power stations is one of the elements of the Generation Recovery Plan, developed by Eskom’s board following a detailed report on the state of the power utility’s stations by German consultancy firm VGB Energy.
Combined with an intensive planned maintenance regime, Eskom has been able to reduce the amount of capacity lost to unplanned unit outages.
The unplanned capacity loss factor (UCLF) of Eskom’s fleet has reduced from around 30% to 35% in 2023 to 25% in recent months.
Although that still means a quarter of Eskom’s total capacity is consistently unavailable due to breakdowns, a 5% improvement is equal to around 2,500MW of additional power.
If this is applied to Eskom’s 52-week system status outlook, load-shedding might only need to be implemented in the weeks of 23 September and 28 October 2024.
However, this situation remains fluid, with Yelland warning that only time will tell if Eskom can sustain the improvements.
As an illustration of the volatility of Eskom’s fleet, its system status outlook for week 21 of 2024 showed that the UCLF had increased by more than three percentage points to 29%.
As a result, the energy availability factor (EAF) also dropped from 64.84% to 61.35%.
Fortunately, this has improved again in week 22, where UCLF dropped to 26.13% and EAF improved to 64.30%.
As of Sunday, 9 June 2024, Eskom’s load-shedding suspension had lasted around 74 days, the longest break in the rotational power cuts since mid-2021.
Eskom attributed the improvement to the Generation Operational Recovery Plan’s increased planned maintenance during the summer months of 2023/24.