Eskom: No load shedding for 2016

CAPETONIANS can rest assured there will be no load shedding this winter or for the rest of the year. Eskom chief executive Brian Molefe is so confident that the company’s darkest days are in the past, he expects no load shedding for the rest of 2016.

“South Africa does not have a systemic energy crisis. It was just that it (Eskom) was operated too close to danger,” he said yesterday.

Presenting the company’s quarterly status report at Parliament, Molefe said load shedding was not being avoided because the demand for electricity had dropped, but because the company had improved on its capacity to produce.

For the first time, planned maintenance was also exceeding breakdowns. “This means that we have regained control of the system. It’s no longer controlling us,” Molefe said.

Medupi unit 6 had added another 794 MW to the grid.

By 2020, Eskom expected to be generating excess electricity it planned to export to neighbouring countries.

This would allow Eskom to limit tariff increases. There has been no load shedding since last August, while available capacity has increased from 70 percent in October 2015 to 76 percent last month.

“It doesn’t mean something terrible won’t go wrong. But if it does, we switch to diesel and if that’s not enough, then I’m sorry. But at least we have a plan and I don’t think this plan will fail.”

Eskom was prepared to run its gas turbines to avoid load shedding this winter, despite being at loggerheads with the national energy regulator over recovering the cost from consumers. “The cost of diesel is less than the cost of load shedding to the economy,” said Molefe.

Eskom slashed its diesel bill from R854 million to less than R25m between October 2015 and April 2016.

Molefe said Eskom was committed to government nuclear plans. The company would be reviving its pebble bed nuclear reactor research, which was canned in 2010.

Additional nuclear capacity could become a reality in less than 10 years. “We will support nuclear because it increases our base load and drives us further away from load shedding,” said Molefe.

He said while Eskom remained committed to renewable energy, it was not capable of producing the capacity needed during peak demand hours. “The truth is that renewables are only available during the day. We can’t rely on renewables to take away load shedding.”

At present, Eskom’s production capacity was 44 087 MW. By 2022, this was expected to increase to 53 389 MW once the Ingula, Medupi and Kusile stations were fully commissioned. Molefe said the company had contracted all the coal it needed to run its facilities for the next five years.

Acting Eskom chairman Zethembe Khoza said the board was satisfied the power utility had turned a corner, and that its status was “solid”.