Eskom latest: Outages intensify; five CEO candidates shortlisted

Eskom said it will increase outages this week due to a delay in returning nine generating units to service.

The power utility will implement stage 4 load-shedding from 5am on Tuesday, then stage 6 from 4pm, it said.

Meanwhile, Eskom’s board has shortlisted five candidates for the position of CEO.

It will meet on Monday to start the process of choosing a leader to run the utility, Eskom chair Mpho Makwana, said at an event broadcast online. He didn’t indicate when the board expects to complete the process. Calib Cassim, who served as Eskom’s CFO, took over as interim CEO in February after Andre de Ruyter left the role after accusing state officials of theft and corruption.

Makwana also said the utility is working to improve the reliability of its generation fleet to reach a 65% energy availability factor by the end of March 2024. The EAF, or amount of capacity producing power, has been declining every year since 2017, according to the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. It has fallen below 50% as Eskom implements record power cuts.

South Africa’s plan to re-examine the time-frame and the process of decommissioning or mothballing coal-fired power plants to address the electricity crisis won’t reverse the nation’s position on the just energy transition, President Cyril Ramaphosa said.

“Any decision on decommissioning will be informed by a detailed technical assessment of the feasibility of continuing to operate older plants,” Ramaphosa said on Monday in his weekly newsletter. “It will also be informed by the time-frame in which we can expect new capacity from other energy sources and the impact on our decarbonisation trajectory.”

South Africa remains committed to reducing its carbon emissions by 2030 to within a target range that, at its upper level, is compatible with limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees C, he said. 

The country will be unable to stop crippling power cuts before the end of 2023, according to electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa.

“It is not technically possible for us to end load-shedding by the end of the calendar year,” Ramokgopa told eNCA. “We will do everything possible to ensure that its intensity is not as severe, so that we get the South African economy going,” the minister said in response to media questions at a meeting of the ANC's top leaders.

Ramokgopa said plans over the next six months to limit power cuts include reducing infrastructure sabotage at Eskom, buying about R30bn of diesel for the utility’s open-cycle turbines, improving the efficiency of underperforming power stations and less maintenance work, especially during peak periods.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg