Eskom says it cannot guarantee residents in the Cape Peninsula that there will be no blackouts when Koeberg’s Unit One is refuelled early next month, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) reported on Thursday.
Eskom presented its short to medium term plans to officials from the city of Cape Town on Wednesday.
Eskom had conceded that the situation was looking dire, the SABC report said.
Load shedding can begin as early as next month when Koeberg’s Unit One is shut down for refuelling.
This would mean a shortage of up to 250 megawatts of electricity in the region.
Ayanda Noah, the head of distribution at Eskom, admitted that the situation would be tight until the end of September.
New power stations
Meanwhile, Eskom said it had built two new open cycle gas turbine power stations, adding a capacity of 1 050 megawatts (MW) to its electricity system.
The plants were built at a cost of around R3,5-billion, and Eskom — the world’s lowest-cost electricity producer — hoped to start another R4,2-billion project in August to expand capacity by a further 1 028 MW.
An open cycle gas turbine plant is a combustion turbine plant fired by liquid fuel turning a generator rotor that produces electricity.
The two new plants are the first of the power stations to be planned and built under democratic South Africa, after the fall of apartheid in 1994, Eskom managing director for the enterprises division Brian Dames said in a statement.
”We have already used the two stations extensively to supply the demand for electricity during this winter,” he said.
The plants were built under a multibillion-rand programme by Eskom to upgrade old infrastructure and build new plants to meet growing demand that has already led to power failures in some parts of the country.
The government has warned that electricity prices will have to rise sharply to help fund a spending programme of roughly $20-billion to improve infrastructure and shore up capacity.
Maroga also said last week the utility plans to reduce the coal component of its electricity generation to 70% by 2025 from the current 88%, in line with global trends toward cleaner types of energy production. – Reuters, Sapa