South Africa woke up this morning to find itself as close as it has ever been to its worst nightmare – a wholesale collapse of its power grid that would take weeks, if not months, to restore if ever it came to pass.
Business Day reports that power utility Eskom has set a new record with its inability to provide for the country’s electricity demand, losing 24 000 megawatts or 47% of its entire network.
Energy expert Ted Blom commented to IOL that “only God can save us!”
Coming on the back of much-needed planned maintenance work to one of the units at twin-turbine nuclear power station Koeberg, the loss of a further 920mw in generating capacity will take the country closer to stage eight load-shedding, according to Blom.
If his views seem alarmist, as an analyst of South Africa’s power woes he is not alone in painting a very bleak picture of things to come.
In Beeld, energy analyst Clyde Mallinson said all the signs were there that the country’s power grid position was going from bad to worse.
In the last six to seven days, he said, Eskom had only been able to utilise about 17 000mw of its entire coal-fired capacity of 40 000mw.
It means it only managed to generate about 43% of required electricity because of the intermittent and exacerbating maintenance issues and breakages experienced at power stations like Arnot, Camden, Duvha, Kendal, Kriel and Tutuka.
Fellow analysts and energy economists Tshepo Kgadima and Lungile Mashile added their voices to the condemnation of what’s going on, pointing a finger at lack of leadership.
The current power crisis is costing the economy about R3 billion daily, and comes days ahead of the ANC national elective conference starting on December 16 - but there is no plan in place by the current government to address the situation.
Mashile attributes the failings at Eskom to the wrong people occupying executive positions at the utility, albeit that the utility’s CEO, Andre Ruyter, has committed himself to avoiding a grid collapse at all costs.
On numerous occasions he has warned that South Africa could be experiencing load-shedding for months to come as the utility attempts to fix failing infrastructure.
This view was again expressed yesterday by Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha after the implementation of stage six was announced.
Mantshantsha added that whatever reserve capacity Eskom had, had to be held back for emergency power provision.
Business Day put this into perspective, saying that Eskom had already exceeded its financial year budget of R11 billion allocated for diesel needed for its open-cycle gas turbines.
By December 7, this budgeted amount, which should have taken the utility through to the end of March, had overrun to R15bn.
For the first week of December alone Eskom burned R551 million to avoid an escalation of load-shedding.
But there’s no more money for that, Blom said.
On Twitter, another energy analyst, Chris Yelland, bemoaned the fact that the ANC’s upcoming conference seemed to be taking precedence over the energy crisis in which the country finds itself.
