More darkness for SA in the new year
BUCKLE up for more load shedding as the Koeberg power plant goes for repairs for six months from December, Eskom executives have warned.
In a press briefing on the state of the entity yesterday, the power utility’s chief operating office, Jan Oberholzer said the power station will be subject to scheduled maintenance from December 8 until June 2023 – in the final stretch of Eskom’s preparations to extend the plant’s life beyond 2024.
Koeberg Unit 1 will be taken offline, and with it 920 megawatts of power generation from the grid, Oberholzer said. The unit will undergo maintenance and refuelling, while three steam generators will be replaced.
Koeberg’s Unit 2 returned online almost two months ago, he said.
He said the relatively new, breakdown-prone Kusile power station has no reserve margin, among a litany of other problems besetting it.
“The generation side of the business remains a concern, specifically the availability of the coal power stations. The 2022 energy availability factor (EAF) at 58.53% is below the targeted performance level.
“A key contributor to the low EAF was high levels of planned maintenance over the summer months,” the presentation read.
In its presentation, Eskom recorded
an improved score on emissions.
“The high levels of unplanned outages remain a concern, however, we continue to drive our Reliability Maintenance Recovery Programme to reduce these. However, available capacity remains a challenge,” the Eskom presentation said.
Acting generation head Thomas Conradie said the planned maintenance is the reason for the low EAF – and planned maintenance is a result of the high number of breakdowns.
This week, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research published statistics that showed that this year’s load shedding has been the most “intensive” to date – with 4 000MW of simultaneous cuts.
Delivering more bad news, Oberholzer announced that its veteran official, acting generation division boss Rhulani Mathebula, had resigned after the company failed to meet targets in a year that has been categorised as its worst to date.
He apparently cited the demands at Eskom as affecting his family and his health.
In the briefing, officials conceded that the generation division’s performance is “unsatisfactory”.