Eskom strives to do maintenance without load shedding

Wednesday, 17 June 2015: Eskom today released its Quarterly State of the System Report which shows that the company is making steady progress in reducing its maintenance backlog, and that in most cases it has been able to perform the requisite plant maintenance without load shedding (see here - PDF).

Despite a constrained and ageing power system, the company still continues to provide more than 96% of country’s electricity requirements even when load shedding at stage 2.

Eskom has consistently warned that the power system is expected to remain constrained for at least the next two years, and that balancing supply and demand during this period would be particularly difficult.

Eskom’s Acting Chief Executive Brian Molefe said: “The focus of our maintenance drive is to ensure long-term reliability and sustainability of our power generating plants. Since December last year, the availability of Eskom’s plant performance has improved from 65% to 75%. Going forward, we plan to continue with our maintenance programme in an effort to reduce the backlog that has accumulated over the past few years. Most importantly, we plan to execute the maintenance drive without having to implement load shedding.”

More than 64% of Eskom’s power stations are in their mid-life and require more preventative maintenance in order to improve their performance and ensure their safety. However, over the past few years a backlog of maintenance outages has developed, and Eskom has identified it as a priority to reduce the backlog as well as keep up with the maintenance schedule.

Mr Molefe urged all electricity users to continue using electricity sparingly in order to allow Eskom enough space to continue with the requisite maintenance.

As has been the case since winter of 2013, some generation maintenance will continue to be done throughout the winter period to assist in ensuring a sustainable generation fleet.

This is in line with the company’s vision of achieving an 80% plant availability, 10% planned maintenance and 10% unplanned maintenance in the next three years. The adherence to philosophy maintenance (regular scheduled maintenance) is set to limit unplanned maintenance below 7 500MW in summer and below 5 500MW in winter.

While there is expected to be sufficient power supply to meet demand for most part of the day, in winter the load increase could be up to 36 000MW particularly over the short sharp evening peak between 17:30 and 18:30. The increase is predominantly due to the use of electric heaters, geysers and cooking that takes place during this time.

Independent Power Producers continue to play an important role contributing about 1 827MW to the grid at a time when the power system is constrained. Renewable energy contributed about 1 300MW during the day, of which 800MW was from solar and 500MW from wind.

In an effort to ensure that Eskom will be able to meet future electricity requirements, the company is currently undertaking a R280-billion capital expenditure programme over 5 years, and building two of the biggest coal-fired power plants in Africa. Since 2001 we added 32 generating units increasing a number of current units to 121.

Eskom plans to bring on stream units 3 and 4 of the Ingula pumped storage facility between January and March 2016 respectively. In total, over 1 500MW new generating capacity will be added to the national grid by the end of this current financial year.

In the new 5 years Eskom will add over 17 000MW of new capacity to the national grid; 9 756km of new transmission lines and 42 470MVA of transmission strengthening. To date over 6 238MW of new capacity has already been added and 5 814km of transmission lines and 29 655MVA have been installed.

Moreover, Medupi Unit 6 was successfully synchronised to the national power grid for the first time on Monday, 2 March 2015, and is currently being progressively tested and optimised to enable it to join the Eskom Generation fleet as a significant contributor to the country’s constrained power supply. Unit 6 currently produces 800MW into the national grid.

Medupi consists of six units of approximately 800 MW each, for a grand total of 4 800 MW, which is 12% of Eskom’s total installed capacity. Eskom is pulling out all stops to ensure that the completion of the remaining five units is not hampered by technical or labour issues.

The 100MW Sere Wind Farm near Vredendal in the Western Cape came into full commercial operation on 31 March 2015. The achievement of this milestone is in line with the commitments made by Eskom in terms of both time and cost and the result of successful interaction between Eskom and our contractors.

Statement issued by Eskom, June 17 2015