It’s not the economy, stupid. An unexpected economic boom in South Africa is not the cause of electricity crisis, despite repeated government claims to this effect. In reality, the total national demand for power has grown only slightly over the past year, while Eskom’s generating capacity has shrunk dramatically.
Current demand stands between 33 000MW and 34 000MW, slightly less than the demand experienced for 36 000MW last winter. According to government figures, demand is now 1 706MW higher than the same period last year, a difference of 4,9%. But Eskom is now producing only 29 000MW, less than 80% capacity. This week, Eskom gave various reasons for its generation crisis. It blamed wet coal, inadequate coal supplies and coal quality, and the fact that several plants were undergoing both scheduled and unscheduled maintenance.
But Solidarity spokesperson Jaco Kleynhans, whose trade union represents many Eskom workers, said these problems should not have had
such a dire fallout. A shortage of skilled workers was the real culprit. On the wet coal pretext, Kleynhans said Eskom had been dealing with this problem ‘for as long as it’s been generating electricityâ€. Wet material could block machines which feed the generators, and the traditional practice was for one or two workers to clear feeder blockages promptly. Now one worker looked after several feeders — meaning that when two blockages occurred simultaneously, the unit had to be shut down. Giving details of a confidential Eskom report leaked to it this week, Business Report revealed that not a single Eskom coal-fired power station was running at full capacity.
Kleynhans insisted that the underlying causes went well beyond routine maintenance. On the 20% of Eskom’s capacity loss due to maintenance, he said spare parts used to be stored at the power stations, but now had to be ordered from overseas, causing additional delays. The Eskom workforce had been halved over the past decade, from 60 000 to 30 000 and training programmes had been shut down. As
a result, ‘it takes a long time to fix a problem at Eskom. There are not enough peopleâ€.
An additional factor was that coal orders were reduced when units were shut down for maintenance, but were often not restored quickly enough when the unit went back on stream. An energy analyst, who asked not to be named, said the high level of unscheduled maintenance was puzzling, given that Eskom was operating at reduced capacity. It was possible that the utility had not adhered to maintenance schedules.
‘In many sub-Saharan African countries, the level of unplanned maintenance often suggests that protocols have not been followed. This increases the probability of endangering organisational capabilities, which often translates into recurrent power outages.†South Africa’s coal-fired power stations depend on boilers, which must be properly maintained, the analyst said. ‘Maintenance and repairs on boilers usually consist of detecting leaks in boiler tubes — the main cause of boiler-forced outages — using online acoustic monitoring
and off-line non-destructive testing.
‘Unplanned maintenance of this critical equipment could mean that preventative maintenance was not followed properly or that the equipment is over-used,†he said. He added that only around 23% of power plant personnel in sub- Saharan Africa claimed to follow the manufacturer’s recommendations to the letter. In 2006, Eskom was criticised for its maintenance practices by the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) after investigating the Koeberg blackouts between November 2005 and February 2006. Nersa found that the licence conditions had been breached, that the utility had been negligent and that maintenance had been inadequate.
Follow the coal Despite Eskom’s insistence that coal is the root of its current crisis, this is by no means clear-cut. Eskom’s three major suppliers, AngloCoal, BHP Billiton and Exxaro, said this week that heavy rains had not affected their coal supplies to Eskom. The operators said they had experienced load shedding but that power was not cut to the mines supplying the power utility and they had not been asked to supply it with additional coal.
Eskom also buys a quarter of itscoal from BEE contractors and small mining operations. Recently it appears to have bought about 25% of its coal on the spot market, which is far more costly than buying it under contract from suppliers. Coal transporters have also been blamed for delays in moving the coal to Eskom. Daan Joubert, operations manager at Ocean Freight, said transporters were not paid enough for their work and that bad roads meant constant breakdowns.
‘BEE contractors get sub-contractors to do the work for them, like us,†he explained. ‘The money was not good; it was all right. But the overheads got bigger as the trucks broke down. The roads haven’t been maintained properly over the years, and it gets worse and worse.†An additional factor has been the gradual running down of Eskom’s coal stockpile, which is supposed to be 20 days’ supply, and its apparent failure to restock adequately over the Christmas period. Earlier this week Eskom admitted that only a few days’ worth of coal had been stockpiled.
A look at Eskom’s last annual report — which only covers the year to March 31 last year — shows that coal supply targets were not met.
For the year ending March 2007, it targeted 115,3-million tons of coal for burning and the purchase target was set at 120-million tons. But though it burnt 119-million tons, only 117-million tons of coal were purchased. In the previous year, 112-million tons were burnt and 111,7-million tons purchased. In other words, for two years Eskom has burnt more coal than it has bought because of an existing stockpile. This strategy would have made it more vulnerable to the supply interruptions it claims to have
experienced.