Eskom implemented stage 6 load shedding shortly after 4am on Sunday morning, leaving South Africans furious and demanding change.
On Sunday morning, Eskom held a media briefing on what the power utility intends doing to solve the load shedding crisis.
Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter said during the virtual briefing that the system had been under pressure for the past week, which had caused the company to use its reserves as well as diesel.
“We are now at a situation where we need to urgently replenish those reserves in order to maintain an adequate safety buffer as we are required to do by the grid code. We are planning to bring back 1 590MW by this evening’s peak and then a further 3500MW by Monday evening,” said De Ruyter.
However, he added that not all of the energy will make its way smoothly on to the grid due to the age and condition of the units.
Tackling the liquidity, De Ruyter said: “It is a fact that liquidity to buy diesel is an issue. In the past five months of this financial year, we have already burned our way through R7.7 billion worth of diesel which is just about the budget for the whole year.”
Eskom said its chief financial officer Calib Cassim has made available an additional R500 million to purchase more diesel.
“What took us into stage 6 was the fact that Kriel unit 2 tripped this morning at 3.39am. The chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer consulted with the system operator, phoned me just after that and by 4.19 we took the decision that stage 6 was regrettably unavoidable. Since then we have seen Kusile unit 3 coming back from a submerged scraper chain failure. That has been repaired. The unit is ramping up as we speak,” said De Ruyter, adding that the unit’s recovery can make a big difference.
“Part of the reason why we have the generation capacity constraints, is that we have a challenge at Koeberg unit 2 with the reactor head gear; this is a mechanical failure that we need to fix in order to operate the plant safely.”
On the topic of possible sabotage, De Ruyter said that he has not seen any evidence of sabotage or untoward activity.
Steps that will be taken by Eskom
On Saturday, Eskom had an urgent board meeting with Minister Pravin Gordhan in attendance. At the meeting they discussed further steps that will be taken.
On Monday, Eskom said it planned to approach the market to procure whatever megawatts are available on an urgent basis. De Ruyter said that they thought the power utility can procure 1000MW from available generation capacity. De Ruyter noted that not all of that will be available immediately.
With regards to IPPs, Eskom had “very high degree of confidence” that it could procure more megawatts.
Until more megawatts can be procured, Eskom has urged South Africans to use electricity as sparingly as possible.
De Ruyter has requested that municipalities assess where they have non-critical loads that can be switched off, such as street lights, in the daytime.
De Ruyter said that he will also be engaging with representatives of organised business to request further assistance in managing peaks.
He urged residents not to run swimming pool equipment and to switch off any unnecessary lights during peak hours.
“You may think that these are insignificant steps but if 60 million South Africans play their role then we can navigate this by also managing our demand.”
IOL