South Africans should brace themselves for a possibility of up to 26 days of load shedding this winter if Eskom’s power supply capacity is hampered by faults and breakdowns.
Eskom executives did their best to paint a hopeful picture of the entity’s attempts to improve its maintenance at its power stations in order to keep a supply on path with demand. But there are worries.
The power utility announced over the weekend that load shedding would be extended until Wednesday as more capacity was lost at a number of its power stations. Eskom COO Jan Oberholzer said it was unclear at the moment how long load shedding would last.
“At this point I cannot make commitments. The system has improved in the past 24 hours. We will make a call and will communicate by tomorrow (Wednesday). Load shedding will remain at level 2 tomorrow (on Wednesday) … that is where the system is,” Oberholzer said.
The country has experienced 44 days of load shedding since April last year. This was a slight reduction compared to 2019.
This was the worst case, but if capacity was stable then the number of load shedding days would decrease to possibly two or none.
Eskom chief executive Andre de Ruyter said that at the beginning of lockdown last year the focus was on “small gradual” maintenance, but then the focus moved to reliability maintenance.
This is the power utility’s biggest problem and Oberholzer said if the targets for fixing reliability maintenance go ahead as planned then the stress on load shedding could be decreased by September. Eskom plans to target the end of April as the competition of the first phase of reliability maintenance – 11 batches of units are expected back at this time.
He also spoke of capacity supply concerns raised by President Cyril Ramaphosa during his State of the Nation Address that the country will continue to have a shortfall of electricity supply during the next five years.
The shortfall could be at an estimated 4 000MW of electricity. Some of the interventions proposed by the government include proposals for an additional supply of electricity in the form of wind and solar energy which could see 2 600MW added to the grid.
In other news – Minister Angie Motshekga failed to explain matric pass rate vs school drop-outs
A “significant” number of school drop-outs who started Grade 1 with the cohort that wrote the matric exam last year have entered the world of work.
This is according to Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga, who sought to explain the huge difference between the number of pupils who entered Grade 1 in 2009 and the cohort that wrote matric 12 years later. Learn more
Source: IOL
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