Eskom is awaiting government approval to get the 100 megawatts of power offered by the Mozambique energy ministry in July.
Eskom will be receiving diesel on Monday from suppliers that ran short last week, which forced higher stages of load-shedding as the utility was not able to run open cycle gas turbines (OCGT) at levels it usually would, the group executive for generation said on Sunday.
“It is not that we ran out of diesel, we did run diesel last week, if you recall,” Bheki Nxumalo told media at Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa’s weekly update on the state of power supply and logistics.
“But obviously the system manager must always maintain certain levels of adequacy in the system. So it is not that we ran out of diesel, we did run OCGTs, although we did not run them as hard as you would normally run them, under normal circumstances.”
Nxumalo was responding to a question as to whether the shortage was the result of a dispute with a supplier, or a dispute with the South African Revenue Service about Eskom’s claim for a tax rebate on diesel, which has in the past bedevilled the utility’s ability to buy diesel to mitigate load-shedding.
“It was really not about any dispute that was there with any supplier, no. It was nothing to that effect, I think it was more just the suppliers said they would be receiving from the 18th, that is what we got from our suppliers.”
He ascribed the shortage to an industry issue with the value-chain in the supply of diesel to the country”.
He said it was not an issue of budget.
“All our main suppliers, they did not have enough but from this week, from the 18th, they will start getting more deliveries, so it really was not the issue of budget, it was more an issue on the value chain side.”
He said it contributed to the need to implement stage six load-shedding repeatedly in the course of the week, against the backdrop of Eskom increasing its planned maintenance by more than double since the start of spring.
“It resulted in lower reserves on our tanks and also utilisations on the pump storage a bit more, which then necessitated this stage six.”
OCGTs have been essential in compensating for the loss of more than 4,000 megawatts due to ongoing structural problems at Medupi and Kusile power plants. Ramokgopa said planned maintenance on Unit four at Kusile for a period of 20 days, starting at the beginning of the month, accounted for a loss of another 800 megawatts.
It was restored to service on Sunday morning, the minister said.
“Unit 4 is back online… so we are very close to shaving off one stage of load-shedding.”
Ramokgopa said there was more good news from Kusile in that unit 3 would be returned to full service a month earlier than expected as engineers had found a way of doing some of the repairs at the plant necessitated by the failure of its west stack simultaneously, rather than in phased fashion.
“In terms of their projections they were going to bring back Unit three by the 28th of November,” he said.
“They have ramped up the rate at which they are doing the work, so we are able to say to the country that we have been able to shave a month on the return of this unit. So the expectation is that we should be able to return unit 3 by the 14th of October. The same is applicable to unit 1.”
It meant that in a month’s time 1,600 megawatt of supply will be returned to the grid and should lower load-shedding by “just shy of two stages”, he added.
Nxumalo said unit 1 which, where a flue-gas desulphurisation mechanism broke down October 2022, would be able to function at maximum output.
“The only thing that is not there is just the sulphur-removal portion of the plant, but other plant areas … are still intact, so the units will return at full capacity.”
Ramokgopa minister said unit 2 should be returned to service by the end of November, rather than by Christmas eve as initially forecast.
“So until the 30th of November, we have the potential to get 3,200 megawatts, and this is why I have kept emphasising that Kusile is central to us addressing the load-shedding question.
“I am just saying ‘addressing the load-shedding question’ because we need significantly more generating capacity to be able to address this.
“I am not saying we have resolved this problem, I am saying we are closer to resolving this problem.”
Because attention has been focused on returning these units to service sooner, there will be some delay in bringing unit 5 online, Ramokgopa said, stressing that once this further unit is commissioned, it would not immediately provide full capacity of 800 megawatts.