Former Eskom chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer has parted ways with the embattled power utility . (Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Eskom said it had made progress in recovering emergency generation reserves and that dam levels at its pumped storage schemes would be fully replenished by Monday.
But the state power utility, which reintroduced rolling blackouts last week — citing a shortage of generation capacity after breakdowns and delays in returning some generating units to service — said diesel levels were still low, because the fuel had to be transported to power stations.
Eskom’s management team provided an update on the current problems, after what group chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer referred to as a “disastrous” week.
He said 42 units tripped during the week but about 37 had been returned to service.
“It is important to understand that we have various plans in place, to increase installed capacity and stop load-shedding. However this is going to take time to implement. I believe for the next 12 months, or so, we may not see the required benefits yet.”
Oberholzer added that a shortage of skills and experience at Eskom and among some contractors, as well as finding the balance between demand and supply of electricity, are some of the problems leading to outages.
He also discussed Eskom’s financial problems, suggesting they would worsen.
“We are way over what we have estimated and forecasted what the expenditure will be. So we have spent R7.7-billion for the first six months. That was a whole year’s budget,” he said.
“So we have got R350-million left of the original year’s budget and we are only halfway through the year. It is a serious concern, we are going to overspend.”
Eskom, which ramped up its load-shedding to stage four during the weekend but eased to stage three on Monday, said it would relax rotational power cuts further to stage two from Tuesday until Friday.