The Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) is working with National Treasury and Eskom to find money to buy supplies of diesel, the department said in a statement on Sunday night.
This comes after DPE minister Pravin Gordhan called an urgent meeting with Eskom Board members, led by chairperson Mpho Makwana, on Sunday evening, over the department’s “serious concerns” about the risk of higher levels of load-shedding in the coming months.
Eskom announced that it was implementing Stage 4 load-shedding from 17:00 on Sunday afternoon until 16:00 on Monday. It said Stage 5 load-shedding would be implemented during the evenings from 16:00 until midnight on Wednesday. Load-shedding will vary between Stage 4 and Stage 2 during the day until Wednesday.
“Changes in the stages of load-shedding will be more erratic due to the absence of the buffer that is normally provided by the diesel generation capacity between generating unit breakdowns,” Eskom said.
The power utility added that the increased implementation of load-shedding was mainly due to the high levels of breakdowns and the depleted emergency generation reserves.
Three units at Kusile Power Station are offline due to the duct (chimney structure) failure late in October, and will remain offline for a few months while repairs to the chimney system take place.
“Unit 1 of Koeberg Nuclear Power Station will continue to generate at a reduced output over the next three weeks as the fuel is depleted ahead of the refuelling and maintenance outage scheduled to commence in December 2022. Since Sunday morning a generating unit each at Arnot, Grootvlei and Majuba power stations was taken offline for repairs. A generating unit at Kriel Power Station was returned to service,” Eskom said.
The DPE said Gordhan had been informed that the relevant Eskom Board Committee had recently engaged with power station managers and the generation management team to apprise the board of the situation in the power stations.
“The DPE is urgently working with National Treasury and Eskom for it to find the money to buy supplies of diesel,” the department said.
It added that it would engage Eskom on the following urgent issues:
• Looking for savings within existing Eskom funds for the ongoing purchase of diesel and maintenance;
• The assessment of the board on the challenges Eskom faces in the current fleet of power stations and the exceptional interventions that must be made to create more reliability in the performance of power stations;
• Urgently seek the assistance of all enforcement bodies to immediately bring a halt to local level disruptions and criminal activities which impact on power stations;
• Ensure Eskom undertakes to continuously ensure that its officials are made more cognisant of the importance of a reliable electricity system to the economic and social well-being of all South Africans.
“All possible efforts are being made to ensure that all the measures in the national electricity plan are implemented,” DPE said.
Eskom currently has 5 354MW on planned maintenance, while another 14 495MW of capacity is unavailable due to breakdowns.
