'We need to do better,' admits electricity minister

A Sunday morning site visit to Eskom's Grootvlei power station, concerns over power generation capacity at Koeberg and a reduction in the renewable energy capacity due to inclement weather have been listed among the big challenges threatening ongoing efforts to reduce load-shedding. 

Providing his weekly report back on the energy crisis, electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said he would be visiting Grootvlei after a fire on Saturday put the station’s unit 2 out of action. Ramokgopa said the aim of the inspection was “to get a first-hand account from the guys on the ground and visual observations on the damage caused”. 

He was confident the fire was not major or “a catastrophe”, but was unable to give a time estimate on how long the unit will be down. The unit has a capacity of 190MW — which according to Ramokgopa, “is not a devastating loss compared to bigger unit’s such as Kriel that generates 600MW” but is still of concern in a situation where “every megawatt counts”. 

Speaking of his unhappiness with the changing stages of load-shedding, the minister said more work needed to be done on the reliability of generating units, as improvements were being counteracted by breakdowns and other faults. 

“This is something that requires urgent attention, and I will share more on that at a later stage,” he said, referring to a situation in the past week when Eskom had shifted the load-shedding stage three times in a period of six hours. 

“So we are working on that reliability because that kind of thing undermines the credibility of Eskom’s statements,” he said. 

Repeated trips and partial load losses were also contributing to intensified load-shedding as the battle to keep controlled outages below stage 3 continued.

Speaking about problems at Koeberg, Ramokgopa said he had visited the site late last week and was not pleased by his findings. Delays at the power station have been adding to the country’s load-shedding woes. 

Koeberg nuclear power station is currently offline for maintenance, refuelling and refurbishment in preparation for a 20-year life extension. The process has been delayed, with the unit only expected to come back online in August. Koeberg’s unit 2 is also scheduled to be taken offline, with the original plan being for this to happen only after unit 1 is restored. 

Each of the two units has the capacity to provide 920MW of “consistent, reliable, clean energy”, and would mean a loss of 1,840MW should they go down simultaneously — a possibility that Ramokgopa is concerned about. 

“Koeberg should have been managed much better. It is exceptionally upsetting,” he said, adding: “I have formed my own view on what is happening there. I am worried and extremely upset about this but that is an issue I will ventilate at a later stage.” 

Asked if he intended taking action or instituting a forensic investigation into what has been happening at the station, Ramokgopa said he was not instrumentally involved as the minister and therefore not authorised to determine what course of action to take. 

“Allow me to engage with the (Eskom) board on where there have been significant failures on a project of this magnitude. They must investigate and, in my view, make sure action is taken against wrongdoing. No individual can be allowed to hold the country to ransom,” he said, adding that he would also not speak on the suspensions of high-level executives. 

“Those actions are driven by the board and exco. I am not going to blur those lines of corporate governance,” he said. 

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