Eskom pinning hopes on Kusile units' early return to ease load-shedding amid ramped up maintenance

Eskom is pinning its hopes on the expected early return to service of three units at Kusile power station to help cushion consumers against higher levels of load-shedding as it continues ramping up its planned maintenance.

Eskom confirmed this week that one of the three units would be online by October 31 and the remaining two by November 30.

The country has been plunged back to stage 6 load-shedding over the past few days as the utility was forced to ramp up repairs or risk the faster deterioration of units.

Electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa and Eskom head of generation Bheki Nxumalo confirmed that stage 6 was due to the ramping up of planned maintenance and issues around unplanned capacity loss factor (UCFL) — the number of units that are failing.

Eskom's energy availability factor is at 55.36%.

Nxumalo gave a detailed breakdown of what happened in the lead-up to severe power cuts.

“I want to focus on the period from September 2 because that's when we had that blip [that created a problem for the system]. What it means is when we increased this planned maintenance ... from the winter period, it reduced the reserve we had.

“If you have a day where you lose more units, then you start using more reserves, which also created a problem. We lost a number of units on that day, because before that we could still recover but from August 29, that's when we started to increase the stages,” he said.

These included units at Medupi, Kriel and Lethabo, which had to be taken offline due to “safety issues”.

Nxumalo explained that they should be back to full service from Thursday. This, along with the return of “problematic units” at Tutuka, which were offline during winter, should result in the easing of load-shedding from the end of the week, he said.

Revealing part of Eskom's longer-term plan to help stave off higher stages of load-shedding while the maintenance continues, Nxumalo said it was relying on the return of units 1, 2 and 3 at Kusile, which went offline in 2022.

Last October, a section of the Kusile unit 1 flue gas duct failed and three units went offline.

Ramokgopa said earlier this year that the temporary repairs of units 1, 2 and 3 were on track and could be completed by December. 

“That's where our focus is, to make sure that we work to bring those units back online because that also will reduce by 2,000MW [load-shedding], so we'll have reserves. So those units, as we indicated earlier, the initial plan was to bring them online by end of November and end-December [but we] have managed to pull back on those units so that the first unit will come in October. So that will also assist us ... help us create reserves,” he said.

“The second tranche that have been problematic over winter were the Tutuka units. Where we were running on average with one unit so Tutuka has started to bring those units back. We are going back to three from Wednesday and by the end of this week, we will be on four units.

“So that is also part of the plan that we have as a cushion as we are increasing the maintenance. There are units that have been off for some time, that we need to come back now. That is at Tutuka and Kusile and this will help us increase that gap so that we go back to lower stages of load-shedding that we have seen through the winter period,” he said.

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