Financial Mail and Business Day

Eskom sets a grim new outage record

• Back to stage 6 load-shedding with 47% of the system down • Koeberg shutdown begins

Denene Erasmus Energy Writer

South Africans had less than 24 hours to enjoy the surprise good news about the economy expanding by 1.6% in the third quarter before Eskom announced another round of crippling power cuts as the utility suffered one of the highest levels of unplanned outages.

Eskom on Wednesday escalated load-shedding to stage 6 for the fourth time this year. The power cuts, which will be implemented until Friday morning, will leave some users without power for more than 10 hours a day and will cost the economy about R3bn a day.

Eskom’s outage factor, a measure of the ratio between unavailable generation capacity and total installed capacity, reached a new high on Wednesday. Total outages amounted to about 24,000MW which meant 47% of the total system was down, and unplanned outages accounted for 19,000MW, or 35% of unavailable capacity.

Outage data published by Eskom showed that this was the highest level of unavailability in at least the past two years.

During the previous bout of stage 6 load-shedding in September, total outages amounted to 22,600MW, or about 45% of installed capacity.

Though GDP figures released by Stats SA on Tuesday showed economic growth beating expectations in the third quarter after contracting 0.7% in the second, SA’s power rationing constraint continues to worsen.

According to an Absa research note, “the third quarter alone saw loss of 3,691GWh of electricity supply, resulting in the single worst quarter of rolling blackouts yet”.

Eskom expects it will be able to reduce load-shedding by one stage — to stage 5 — by Friday morning, but businesses must prepare for many more months of power cuts.

It confirmed to Business Day it would start with the planned maintenance and refuelling shutdown of unit 1 of Koeberg nuclear power station on Wednesday evening. The shut

down will last about six months and will take about 950MW (equal to about one stage of loadshedding) off the grid for the duration of the outage.

Despite announcing in November that it has run out of money for fuel, Eskom spent R551m on diesel during the first week of December to run its diesel-powered open-cycle gas turbines. But budget constraints will force the utility to cut back on the amount of diesel it uses to run the turbines. These emergency generation units can spare the country from two stages of load-shedding when running at full capacity.

Eskom said the depletion of its diesel budget contributed to the move to stage 6 load-shedding on Wednesday.

“The funding constraints have limited the amount of diesel available and when the open-cycle gas turbines are not running, this can result in an increase of two stages of loadshedding over the case where all the units could be run at full capacity,” the utility said.

Jan Oberholzer, Eskom’s COO, announced in November that the utility had spent its entire diesel budget for the current financial year, which ends in March 2023.

By December 7, Eskom had spent more than R15bn on diesel in this financial year against a budget of about R11bn.

“So far, Eskom has burnt R551m diesel in December. However, the limited diesel stocks are being conserved for emergencies,” Eskom said. “Any orders for diesel placed if funds are received will take five to seven weeks to deliver. Thus, very little more is expected to be spent on diesel in December.”

Despite an expected drop in electricity demand as businesses close for Christmas and New Year, load-shedding may thus have to be implemented over this period.

According to Eskom, the need for load-shedding depends on the status of the network at any given time to balance supply and demand. “It therefore does not automatically mean less or lower stages of load-shedding over the festive period. Eskom will endeavour to minimise load-shedding over this period.”

The power company has reportedly asked the National Treasury for R19.5bn to buy diesel for emergency power generation. It confirmed to Business Day that it had requested additional funding, but said that it had not yet received the Treasury’s decision on this as discussions were still under way.

Electricity supply is under further strain due to breakage outages at Kusile and Medupi, the largest and newest power stations in Eskom’s fleet.

Three units at Kusile, with combined generation capacity of 2,200MW, were shut down recently after unit 1 had a chimney collapse. Eskom cannot say when these units will be returned to service, but it will take at least a few months.

Medupi Unit 4 (800MW), which was damaged by an explosion in 2021, will be out of service until September 2024.

In its most recent system outlook for the 2022/2023 summer months, Eskom predicted that under a worst-case scenario, which caters for 16,000MW (about 35% of Eskom’s total installed capacity) of unplanned outages, it will have to implement on average 26 days of stage 3 load-shedding monthly for the next three months.

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2022-12-08T08:00:00.0000000Z

2022-12-08T08:00:00.0000000Z

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