DA questions Eskom’s engineering capacity to fix over 50% in unavailable capacity from coal plants
8 May 2023
The DA is calling on the Minister of Public Enterprises, Pravin Gordhan, to update the nation on whether Eskom has adequate engineering and technical expertise at its disposal to deal with the high rates of coal power stations that have been taken offline, either due to breakdowns or for maintenance.
Eskom’s latest system update shows that about 50% (19 333MW) of the utility’s 37 698MW coal generation capacity is offline due to breakdowns, while 4 524MW is out for planned maintenance. It is highly questionable that Eskom’s rapid response teams have the requisite human resources to attend to this huge expanse of capacity that has broken down.
With the coming winter months and the anticipated increase in electricity demand, notwithstanding the fact that Eskom is already averaging stage 6 load-shedding every week, the utility must keep breakdowns as low as possible. That will not be possible if the engineering teams tasked with attending to these breakdowns are stretched to their limit.
In terms of quality and capability of those who effect maintenance - in each of Eskom’s power plants, tripping is a perennial problem – a problem rooted in reliability maintenance. To deal with these, the operating envelopes which include factors such as the maximum and minimum levels of power output, temperature, pressure, fuel consumption, and other operating parameters need to be reset, but the problem is that maintenance is outsourced to often-crooked cadres who don’t know a spanner from a wrench.