Eskom puts blackouts on hold
Load-shedding unlikely – CEO
ESKOM was unlikely to loadshed this summer and might even avoid it next winter as the utility was gradually catching up on its maintenance backlog and making its generating units more efficient‚ chief executive Brian Molefe said on Monday.
In the first quarter of this year SA experienced frequent outages as Eskom’s previous management team accelerated necessary maintenance that had been put off under the “keep the lights on” policy pursued from 2009 to last year.
Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown conceded in March that loadshedding was costing the economy R20- to R30-billion a month.
Molefe‚ who joined Eskom in April‚ told a quarterly briefing on Monday that the utility had now delivered electricity for 99 days continuously‚ except for two hours and 20 minutes of loadshedding on September 14 when a number of units failed simultaneously.
The benefit of Eskom’s sustained delivery was reflected in September’s 0.9% increase in manufacturing output reported by Statistics SA last week‚ he said.
Molefe also said commentators who claimed Eskom was only able to deliver enough electricity because demand had fallen‚ or because it was curtailing power to its biggest customers‚ were incorrect. Demand trends were similar from August to October in 2013‚ last year and this year.
Eskom’s key industrial customers experienced stage two load curtailment only once‚ on October 9‚ for five-and-ahalf hours.
Molefe said Eskom was implementing a new maintenance methodology called Tetris‚ which provided greater predictability. Eskom was committed to do scheduled maintenance on plants with a capacity of 4 500MW daily.
Technology and commercial executive Matshela Koko said current capacity was 32 900MW and the strategy was to maintain capacity above 32 500MW. The energy availability factor was 74.4% from 73% at the last briefing.
Although EE Publishers managing director Chris Yelland disputed this‚ saying the longer-term trend was 72% and flat‚ Koko and Molefe insisted the longer-term trend in the availability factor was improving.
Molefe said this summer‚ because of the unusually hot weather‚ customer demand was expected to be higher than usual‚ but Eskom expected to be able to carry out maintenance with no or limited load-shedding.
Koko said although the dams supplying Eskom’s power stations were 58% full on average‚ the stations continued to receive water with 95% security and that was expected to continue for the next 12 months.
Chief financial officer Anoj Singh said Eskom’s funding gap had reduced and if it received the promised equity injection from the government this year it would end the financial year with R10- to R15-billion in cash which would help it to meet a repayment of R47-billion due next year. There was potential to launch a global bond this year‚ depending on market demand‚ and also a syndicated loan.
Molefe said during an Eskom roadshow in London last week foreign investors had shown appetite for an Eskom bond. — BDLive