Eskom’s final meltdown
There is no light at end of Eskom tunnel with two units down, others flooded and 13 mothballed. President Cyril Ramaphosa meets with bosses today.
Mothballing of 13 units removed 1 887MW from system.
As President Cyril Ramaphosa meets with Eskom’s leadership today after cutting short his Egypt trip, rolling blackouts could be here until at least the end of the year, an energy expert said yesterday.
Eskom said yesterday the power supply to the conveyors feeding coal at Medupi power station had failed on Monday, resulting in a loss of two units.
“At Kriel, there was flooding, leading to no coal deliveries, as well as flooding at Komatie,” said energy expert Ted Blom.
Eskom said Camden had 250mm rain, which lead to flooding of the boiler, turbine hall, and “other critical infrastructure connected to coal supply”.
Another issue was the mothballing of 13 units at Hendrina, Komati, and Grootvlei removing 1 887MW from the system, according to Eskom’s System Adequacy Outlook.
Of 46 000MW Eskom is supposed to generate, there was a total loss of 15 200MW yesterday, leaving only 30 800MW to meet SA’s usual 30 000MW demand.
When stage 6 was implemented on Monday night, this meant 6 000MW had to be taken off the board leaving 24 800MW available to power the country.
SA had yesterday gone back to stage 4 (4 000MW) blackouts until 11pm last night, leaving the system still clinging by its nails to the on switch.
Another problem was the renewable energy plants weren’t delivering power, said Blom, because of cloud cover. “It’s no use putting your faith in renewable energy which is erratic and not perpetual,” Blom said. The plants only started delivering energy from about 10am.
And the blackouts continued, so too did the confusion over where the cuts will land, with 278 municipalities each having their own system depending on when and if they are shed by Eskom.
Joburg City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said the city’s system was not cast in stone.
“City Power normally makes Stage 1 between two hours and four,” Mangena said.
“And it’s also because blocks and suburbs would often overlap into other blocks’ schedule on different days during stage 6.
“For example, if stage 6 between 8am and noon (maybe until 2pm at times), include blocks 4A, 5B, 6B, we may switch off only two of those blocks after four hours and allow 5B to go for six hours while bringing in a new set of blocks to join it.”