Eskom faces a winter from hell — going into lower temperatures with more than 3,000MW less generation capacity compared with last year, while finding itself heavily relying on its unpredictable old fleet which could breakdown any time.
On Thursday, Eskom told the country that this winter will be “tight and difficult” with stage 8 load-shedding a possibility.
Eskom’s group executive for transmission Segomoco Scheppers presented the bleak picture to the nation, saying Eskom has just 26,500MW available generation capacity going into the winter, despite sitting with 47,500MW installed capacity.
The 2023 winter season comes as Eskom is already load-shedding at stage 6, while evening energy demand peaks are hovering just above 30,000MW but were expected to rise to 33,000MW during mid-winter.
As temperatures drop, demand for power rises while Eskom sits with a mere additional of 75MW from independent power producers having been added to the grid, while another 100MW is expected to be added this week, Scheppers announced.
Scheppers also outlined that a further 290MW from Eskom’s emergency generator programme was expected during winter.
However, the shortfall is still at more than 6,000MW compared to last year’s shortage of 4,000MW ahead of the 2022 winter season, which still saw stage 6 load-shedding implemented.
Around this time last year, Eskom had just implemented stage 6 load-shedding for the first time since 2019. This year, stage 6 has been implemented during evening peaks regularly since last month.
Energy experts consider the current energy situation to be a clear indication that higher load-shedding stages are unavoidable deeper into winter.
Energy expert Lungile Mashele has already predicted a shortage of about 10,000MW, which would essentially plunge the country into stage 10 load-shedding this winter.
Eskom announced that it enters the 2023 winter season with 3,080MW less capacity. This amounts to more than three stages of load-shedding.
Eskom announced on Thursday that it is going into winter without any power generated from the sole unit at Komati power station, unit 1 at Koeberg nuclear station, which is undergoing steam generator replacement and unit 1, 2, and 3 from Kusile.
A section of Kusile’s unit 1 collapsed earlier this year and caused the loss of three units at the power station which produced 2,400MW of power.
Sunday Times reported in February how an internal Eskom report shed light on how unnamed bosses at Megawatt Park gave verbal instructions to return unit 1 at Kusile to service and run it at maximum capacity, even though a critical component had failed and needed to be repaired.
This led to the collapse that put three of the four units out of service and they were now only expected back around November. Kusile was supposed to produce 4,800MW of power by 2013, but it is a decade behind and billions of rand over budget.
Late last year, Eskom shut down the 60-year-old Komati power station, indicating that it would be repurposed into a wind and solar energy production site, however, on Thursday Eskom indicated that was yet to happen.
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Eskom announced that it enters the 2023 winter season with 3,080MW less capacity. This amounts to more than three stages of load-shedding.
Despite having been in a better situation than this year, Eskom still implemented stage 6 load-shedding twice in June last year.
On the second occasion, Eskom bizarrely blamed the blackouts on unprotected strikes over wage increases by members of the National Union of Mineworkers and the National Union of Metalworkers of SA.
However, stage 6 load-shedding was still a reality, even around the end of last year’s winter season, caused largely by breakdowns at several power stations.
Scheppers indicated that Eskom was entering this winter season on the backfoot and presented three possible scenarios which include the possibility of stage 8 load-shedding.
Interim Group CEO Calib Cassim said there’s a R20bn budget for diesel which will be used as one of the mitigating interventions against higher stages of load-shedding.
Eskom has already indicated that between stage 3 and stage 5 load-shedding will be implemented throughout the winter period, at least until August.
The worst-case scenario, according to Eskom’s three winter scenarios, will see stage 8 load-shedding implemented.
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