Load-shedding to end load-shedding?

GTreasury erman consortium’ on Eskom s vgbe’s coal-fired report power for stations the National has left many questions unanswered, including why it took the Treasury six months to release the report.

It has not, as many expected, provided detailed analysis of the cost and viability of extending the life of those stations that are due for decommissioning between now and 2030.

What the report did find was that Eskom has a “dysfunctional and overly complex” management system that power station managers have to waste time navigating if they want to get anything done at all.

Apart from identifying urgent fixes at water treatment plants at Medupi, Matimba and Kendal power stations, which were placing more than 13,000MW capacity at risk of “catastrophic failure”, the report says that to give Eskom the best chance of fixing its ailing and unreliable coal fleet it needs to be allowed the space to do so. This would mean rapidly adding new generation capacity or implementing more load-shedding so that generations units can be switched off to undergo thorough maintenance.

In its 600-page report vgbe suggests that to prevent the “collapse” of some power plants, Eskom must be allowed to do proper maintenance work “even if this means a higher level of load-shedding for a limited period of time”. This needs to be done sooner rather than later, because the cycle of “quick fixes” and forcing plants to continue operating at the expense of their technical condition has gained so much momentum that it could “lead to the collapse of plants”.

During their time at the utility, former CEO André de Ruyter and COO Jan Oberholzer repeatedly said 6,000MW to 8,000MW of new generation capacity had to be added urgently to create the space Eskom needed for maintenance. This has not happened, and Eskom has had to resort to the second option of implementing more load-shedding to get that “additional” space.

During December, January and February, after Eskom had already received the vgbe report, planned maintenance was increased to an average of 8,000MW (equal to eight stages of load-shedding). This has resulted in near constant load-shedding, which, on those days when the country was at stage 2 or 3, would arguably not have been necessary if there was less planned maintenance.

As electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa keeps reminding South Africans, this is the short-term pain we must feel for the long-term gain of improving the reliability and performance of the coal-fired power stations. He insists that the strategy is working and that there is already “sustained improvement in the generation performance, with all indicators showing a positive trajectory”.

There have been recent signs of improvement, but it might be premature to say there has been sustained improvement.

According to Eskom, unplanned outages decreased from 34% of the total generation system capacity in January 2023 to 30% in January 2024. But as we saw in February, when the country was plunged into stage 6 load-shedding after nine generating units broke over four days, the system remains unreliable.

This makes the vgbe report’s finding on how effectively money allocated to maintenance is being spent very worrying.

The R254bn bailout Eskom received from the Treasury has made it possible for the utility to increase spending on maintenance and to better plan its maintenance programme knowing there will money to pay for it.

But the vgbe report finds that Eskom’s problem is not that it is spending too little on maintenance. Eskom’s maintenance budget for its coal fleet from 2013 to 2027 was either above or within the range provided for by international benchmarks, taking into account the technology, size and age of the coal fleet.

“Hence, the money spent by Eskom should have been sufficient to execute proper maintenance and to keep the power plants in a good condition,” the report says.

Time will tell if the money Eskom is spending on maintenance now will lead to better results. If so, the unplanned outages should continue improving, which would show that the system is becoming more reliable. If not, our short-term pain will only earn us even more pain in the long term.

TIME WILL TELL IF THE MONEY ESKOM IS SPENDING ON MAINTENANCE NOW WILL LEAD TO BETTER RESULTS