Former Eskom chief executive Andre De Ruyter. Photo: Supplied
Nineteen parties who are taking the state and Eskom to court over load-shedding are sorely misguided in asserting that coal-fired power plants could be run long beyond their intended lifespan, former Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter has submitted in an answering affidavit.
“The applicants make the startling submission that Eskom’s ageing fleet is unrelated to current levels of load-shedding. They suggest that a power station can operate for an indefinite length of time, provided it is suitably maintained,” he said.
“Respectfully, this is hopeful sophistry.”
In a founding affidavit filed on behalf of the litigants, United Democratic Movement leader Bantu Holomisa argued that it was plain that inadequate maintenance of power plants — for whatever reason — was the main reason for continuous load-shedding.
“Coupled with the absence of quality maintenance, the provision of electricity is further eroded by the state’s commitment to a programme to close power stations,” he said.
He then cited the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa), a co-applicant in the case, as calculating that the closure of the Arnot, Grootvlei and Hendrina plants had resulted in a capacity loss of 2 200 megawatts as from last year. Holomisa estimated that further closures would result in the loss of a further 3 200MW by 2027.
The closure of Komati, Holomisa said, may have had a negligible impact on energy availability but this was not related to its lifespan but was part of a drive to abandon coal for renewable energy.
“These decisions do not concern the life expectancy of power stations. Rather, they are strategic in nature and aimed at meeting the just energy transition requirement,” he contended.
“It is not my place to quibble with this rationale,” he added, before suggesting that it was, at best, being applied prematurely..
“Decisions to close power stations and not maintain them and then to add renewable capacity to an underperforming grid, where the contribution of such renewables to the increased generation has neither been explained nor generated, has transformed Eskom from a world-class licencee to a piteous fraction of its former juristic self.”
Holomisa suggested that this was contrary to international practice and part of the drive to abandon coal in favour of renewable energy.
“International evidence is in fact replete with scenarios where power stations have been running for a very long time, some for more than a century,” he said.
“One must then pose the rational question why the state believes it proper to obliterate the existing power supply when its developmental goal of alternative generation in the form of IPPs [independent power producers] is in its infancy and simply cannot support or sustain the nation’s power consumption needs in the immediate future.”
De Ruyter countered that as plants aged, maintenance became more costly.
“Like any piece of machinery, as a power station ages, maintenance becomes more expensive. Eventually, maintenance of a particular power station becomes so expensive that resources are better spent elsewhere.
Specifically, resources are better utilised introducing new generation capacity or performing maintenance on power stations where maintenance is less expensive and generation capacity can be improved at less cost. For this reason, international experience is that coal power plants are retired on average at about 50 years.
With the exception of Medupi and Kusile, the average age of South Africa’s coal-fired plants was 43 years, he added.
But because they have been run harder than intended, without the benefit of adequate maintenance, in a bid to “keep the lights on”, the power plants have degraded faster than they would have otherwise.
As a result, local coal power plants have been run at a higher Energy Utilisation than the global benchmark.
“Like any piece of machinery, as a power station ages, maintenance becomes more expensive. Eventually, maintenance of a particular power station becomes so expensive that resources are better spent elsewhere,” De Ruyter said.
“Specifically, resources are better utilised introducing new generation capacity or performing maintenance on power stations where maintenance is less expensive and generation capacity can be improved at less cost. For this reason, international experience is that coal power plants are retired, on average, at about 50 years.”
De Ruyter said Eskom could not heed the applicants’ call to exempt facilities that provide key services, including health, water, education and policing, from load-shedding, as this was logistically impossible and would mean a real risk of the electricity grid collapsing.
“In most cases, hospitals and clinics, schools, police stations, small businesses, electronic communications networks and telecoms infrastructure are embedded in distribution networks containing other residential and nonresidential loads.
“Due to their embeddedness, these institutions cannot be excluded from load-shedding without also excluding the other customers who share those distribution lines. In other words, to continue to supply an embedded customer with electricity thus requires continuing to supply all the other upstream customers on the distribution line as well.”
This would then defeat the purpose of load-shedding, which was to protect the grid from collapse and the country from chaos.
“If supply and demand are not kept in balance on the national electricity grid, the grid will collapse and the entire country will experience a blackout or total loss in electricity supply,” he said.
“Without wishing to sound alarmist, the consequences of such a blackout would be catastrophic. Some of the likely impacts are identifiable from international experiences of extended blackouts, such as the week-long blackout in Venezuela in March 2019.”
The probable fallout would include the shutdown of phone and internet platforms; hospitals; morgues and auto teller machines and a high risk of looting and public unrest.
De Ruyter reiterated in his affidavit that the utility envisioned adding 6 000MW to Eskom’s generation capacity within 24 months to obviate the need for load-shedding but that this would not have arisen had his predecessors Brian Molefe and Matshela Koko not failed to sign contracts with independent renewable-energy power producers.
“By taking these decisions, Mr Molefe and Mr Koko inhibited the necessary growth of South Africa’s generation capacity.”
The applicants also include Mmusi Maimane’s Build One South Africa, the Inkatha Freedom Party, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, the African Council of Hawkers and Informal Business, the Soweto Action Committee, the White River Neighbourhood Watch and political analyst Lukhona Mnguni.
They have brought a two-part application, the first of which will be heard by the Pretoria High Court on 20 March and the second on 23 May. In the first, they seek an interdict compelling the government and Eskom to exempt critical sectors from load-shedding. The parties also ask that the government be ordered to table a plan, within seven days, with steps it will take to end load-shedding, including a maintenance schedule for Eskom.
In part B, they ask the court for a declaratory order that President Cyril Ramaphosa, Eskom, Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan, Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe, and the state as a whole, have contravened their obligation to protect, respect and promote the rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights.
In his answering affidavit, Ramaphosa said load-shedding does not constitute a dereliction of duty on his part or that of national government as the law places the responsibility for electricity provision on municipalities.
De Ruyter, in his far more detailed submission to the court, noted that municipalities are vested with the constitutional responsibility for the reticulation of electricity.
“Save for the instructions it can issue as the System Operator (in terms of the Grid Code), Eskom does not, and I am advised cannot, instruct municipalities on how to exercise that power.”
He resigned late last year but was last week relieved of the obligation to serve a three-month notice period, which would have ended at the end of March, after giving a television interview in which he said a senior ANC politician was complicit in ongoing corruption at the utility.