Brace for more blackouts

ESKOM: EXPERTS AND PARTS IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND IN HARD LOCKDOWN

With the hard lockdown making it impossible for Eskom to employ the necessary experts and obtain key parts, the power utility has been forced to implement load shedding to conduct essential maintenance, and regular outages could continue for the next 18 months.

‘Power cuts are necessary to replenish emergency generation reserves.’

Expect load shedding to increase this year as Eskom works on its deep level maintenance to improve power supply as the country labours under lockdown, affecting millions of people working from home to avoid being infected with Covid-19 as South Africa reached 10th place in the world in terms of infections.

While load shedding would affect those staying at home, the power cuts have had no impact on field hospitals established for Covid-19 patients in the hard-hit provinces of Gauteng and Western Cape.

Gauteng health spokesperson Kwara Kekana said the province’s facilities relied on back-up generators during an outage.

“Load shedding is undesirable for everyone. We hope that we can have stable power supply, especially during this period of Covid-19 and the winter season,” she said.

Back-up generators were in use while being maintained regularly and diesel levels are observed and refilled, said Western Cape health spokesperson Mark van der Heever.

While the power utility said in May that there was an 80% chance of three days of Stage 1 load shedding during the winter period, Stage 2 load shedding was instead implemented from Friday after five generation units were taken off the grid.

According to the power utility, the electricity constraint, which is also affected by the colder weather, could continue throughout the week.

The power utility had intended on rolling out the deep level maintenance on generation units and power plants for the next 18 months, but were delayed by strict lockdown regulations which prevented the import of the necessary experts and parts, said Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha.

Eskom instead took advantage of the low power demand during the lockdown to roll out opportunistic maintenance.

“If it was that simple, we would have done it during the lockdown. But the borders were closed and so on. The experts that had to do this for us could not be brought in during the lockdown, together with any equipment meant to come from overseas,” Mantshantsha said.

“That work is now carrying on during this period. People and the equipment that we need from outside are coming in. Unfortunately, due to the Covid-19 regulations, we can’t have many people working in one space. At this point, we only have 1000MW taken down for this reliability maintenance,” he told The Citizen.

“While Eskom teams are working round the clock to return generation units to service, the severely constrained generation system will most likely persist through the coming week.”

“Implementing load shedding is necessary in order to replenish the emergency generation reserves to better prepare for the coming week,” said Eskom at the weekend.

This could lead to an increase in load shedding over the next 18 months as generation units need to be shut down for upgrading and maintaining, said energy expert, Chris Yelland.

“When they do deep level maintenance, they have to switch off generators over the period of time for two to three months per generator.

“During deep level maintenance, you should expect load shedding to increase because you are taking the generators out of service for a long time to do maintenance,” he said.

The work is now carrying on during this period.