Eskom battles to keep lights on amid wage hike demands
Eskom has warned there is a high risk of load-shedding continuing until Friday as the struggling state-owned power utility battles to bring generation units back online while suffering new outages.
Last week, Eskom lost eight generation units with a combined capacity of 3,800MW due to boiler tube leaks, some of which have still not been brought back online.
“We are short of generating capacity needed to supply the country’s demand,” Eskom chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer said during a media briefing yesterday.
A trip at the Kusile power station forced Eskom to increase planned load-shedding for yesterday by an additional 1,000MW from stage 3 to stage 4.
Oberholzer said load-shedding was likely to be implemented between 5pm and 10pm every night until Friday.
If there were more capacity losses and too much pressure on emergency generation reserves, Eskom may be forced to implement load-shedding throughout the day.
About 19,000MW of generation capacity was unavailable yesterday out of Eskom’s total installed capacity (including emergency generation units) of about 41,000MW.
Oberholzer said about 40million litres of diesel had been used since the start of this month to power open cycle gas turbines to provide emergency generation capacity.
“We are burning two-million litres of diesel per day, and we have to be careful not to deplete our emergency reserves.”
Eskom chief executive Andre de Ruyter said the recent performance of one of SA’s newest coal-fired power stations, Kusile, was a big disappointment. The power station was generating only 540MW from its three commercial units, which have combined generation capacity of 2,400MW. At completion, Kusile will consist of six units with a generation capacity of 800MW each to produce a maximum 4,800MW.
Some of the outages at Kusile are due to repairs to the emissions control equipment (flue gas desulphurisation), which has been the source of considerable problems on one of the generation units.
As if its generation woes are not enough, the power utility is also facing potential work stoppages from disgruntled workers over pay increases.
The National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) and National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), which represent most of its estimated 46,000 workers, are demanding a oneyear, 15% across-the-board wage hike and a housing allowance of R1,600. The demand is above the inflation rate of 5.9% for March, as reported by Stats SA.
Tommy Wedderspoon, sector co-ordinator for Solidarity, said the trade union was demanding consumer price index plus 2.5% (8.4%).
Numsa’s and NUM’s wage demands are in line with the above-inflation increases mineworkers, steel sector workers and public servants are demanding.
De Ruyter said Eskom was not in a position to grant a double-digit wage increase.
“[Eskom] is still in a lossmaking situation. I am not sure where Numsa gets the idea that we have lots of cash available,” he said at the briefing.
The parties met at the Eskom central bargaining forum last week for a second round of talks, but the unions said management had not responded to their demands for higher wages for the 2022/2023 financial year.