As reports filtered through that Eskom was beginning to gain the upper hand on faulty new generators and failing older ones, and the country crossed its fingers that the load of punishing power outages was about to be lessened, energy analyst Chris Yelland warned that South Africa shouldn’t keep its hopes up. Echoing President Cyril Ramaphosa’s comments in parliament that “there’s no silver bullet for the myriad problems Eskom is facing”,
Yelland added: “I expect that within the next few months we are going to intermittently veer between load shedding and no load shedding.” And since speaking to FTW, startling figures have been released by renewable power supply firm Enertrag about what the rapidly ramped-up stages of load shedding are costing the country. Using a metric called “cost of undelivered energy”, the firm’s South African director, Tobias Bischof-Niemz, said around R80 to R90 was lost to production for every kilowatt per hour that was not delivered, amounting to about R1bn per day at stage two. But as the power utility buckled under flawed capacity, leading to at least nine out of 20 generators tripping, resulting in an escalating loss of 4000 kilowatts – 40% of Eskom’s output – and load shedding shot up,
Bischof-Niemz estimated that South Africa had lost at least R2bn in earnings for every day outages went to stage four. Putting a different spin on things, Econometrix MD Azar Jammine said about 20% of economic activity was lost during severe outages. In real terms it means 0.1% of South Africa’s GDP goes down the tubes every time Eskom falters and we go to stage four. And if it means anything for the power utility’s massive debt burden of R420bn, Eskom only loses around R1bn in revenue for every month of load shedding, compared to the R1bn a day it costs the country if it’s lucky enough not to exceed stage two. For industry it means greater reliance on alternative power sources that, said Yelland, “cost around five times more than the electricity we get from Eskom”. Essentially it means passeddown costs and although it’s expensive, “it pays to have additional generation supply measures in place because
without it we might as well close up and go home”. Yelland’s own company, EE Publishers, “would be done for if we didn’t have a diesel generator that automatically kicks in every time Eskom starts to load shed”. FTW assistant editor Liesl Venter, who works from Cape Town, sketched a clear picture of the crippling effect load shedding has on her output. “First off, the scheduling is totally random. It jumps from stage one to three and four so there’s no way of planning your working schedule. “When you have two outages during working hours, as was the case last week, that’s six hours out of an eight-hour working day which, in a deadline-driven industry, can’t be made up tomorrow. “For articles that are not time-sensitive it means waking up at 4am when the power is on. But there are some things that you can only doduring working hours.”
“And to think it could all have been avoided,” said Yelland. “If the Medupi and Kusile power stations were delivered on time as planned in 2014, and all 12 units were working without the current design flaws adding to old generation capacity that’s persistently breaking down because of maintenance issues, we would not have had load shedding today.” Of course it’s not all just Eskom’s fault. Apart from years of scandalised, corruptionladen mismanagement by the likes of Gupta-stooge Brian Molefe, it emerged last week that diesel intended to keep open-gas turbines going was delayed in the Port of Mossel Bay. The much-needed delivery to PetroSA, blocked by another vessel in the harbour, is said to have contributed to Eskom’s escalating woes that led to the sudden stage four spike on Monday, February 11. “Either way, load shedding is here to stay,” Yelland said. He warned that we should all light a candle for the utility’s debt repayment deadline. If it defaults come April, the international investment community will pull the plug on Eskom
CAPTION: If the Medupi and Kusile power stations were delivered on time we would not have had load shedding today. – Chris Yelland
