The escalating faults and outages in combination with torrential rain have led to the City of Joburg asking for a break from load-shedding. (Photo by EMMANUEL CROSET / AFP)
Areas of the City of Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni metro and eThekwini are having both load-shedding and water-shedding, sometimes for more than 12 hours a day.
Businesses and citizens will have to cope with Eskom’s higher stages of load-shedding until 2027, the utility said in a report last month.
By Sunday, South Africans had already endured 156 days without electricity. The current bout of load-shedding, which has seen the country go to stages five and six in the past week, was caused by Eskom’s continued power plant breakdowns, including three units at Kusile power station and one unit at Koeberg.
The electricity cuts, in combination with the persistent rain that has affected the majority of residents in the metro, have left the City of Johannesburg struggling with an overburdened grid and failing infrastructure.
Municipalities affected
The City of Johannesburg pleaded with Eskom to exempt it from load-shedding as it deals with torrential rains. Johannesburg mayor Mpho Phalatse submitted the urgent request to Eskom as City Power struggles to clear the increasing backlog.
Environment and infrastructure services MMC Michael Sun said the city had made progress but that because of continuous rainfall, additional faults were being logged every hour and was battling to keep the system going.
“Given the urgent need for City Power to attend to the widespread and escalating faults, the entity has expressed its concern that load-shedding is not only causing additional faults and stress on the network, but is also preventing the entity from being able to effectively attend to the outages and to stabilise the situation,” Sun said in a statement.
During the weekend, Johannesburg residents had to deal with widespread power outages. In some areas, they had been without electricity for more than 50 hours by Monday morning.
An exemption was granted to KwaZulu-Natal after April’s devastating floods hit the province. eThekwini is exempt from load-shedding unless it reaches stage four. Frequent electricity disruptions have strained infrastructure, leading to power trips, said eThekwini spokesperson Msawakhe Mayisela.
“High levels of load-shedding have a much bigger economic impact on our commercial customers as frequent load-shedding halts production, placing thousands of jobs in jeopardy,” Mayisela said.
He added that load-shedding is affecting its pump stations, which rely on electricity. “In areas that are most likely to experience water outages, we have temporary measures in place that include the use of water tankers that are sent to affected communities. We are also working closely with the electricity department to exempt those pump stations.”
Buckling infrastructure, theft and water cuts are some of the headaches municipalities have complained about. If load-shedding worsens, the situation would rapidly deteriorate as resources are stretched.
Metros run by the Democratic Alliance (DA), including Johannesburg, Tshwane and Cape Town, have begun to take precautionary steps amid fears of increased load-shedding schedules during which South Africans would be without power for up to 12 hours a day.
On Monday, Tshwane mayor Randall Williams ordered all his mayoral committee members to set up a joint operation centre to curb the prolonged power outages.
The DA-controlled Western Cape government said there were increased complaints from municipalities that load-shedding was crippling their efforts to provide essential services.
No solution in sight
Last month, Eskom released a medium-term adequacy report in which it painted a worrying picture of the problems the utility faces internally. The report added that Eskom will only have a solution by 2027.
“The situation will worsen as the plant performance of Eskom’s fleet continues to trend downwards, power stations shut down and demand grows.”
The utility said the three units at Kusile power station were taken out of service after a chimney collapsed, as a result of Eskom’s poor management of the flue-gas desulphurisation plant. Refuelling and maintenance outage caused Koeberg unit 1 to go down. Eskom said in a statement that this would further reduce available generation capacity and exacerbate the occurrence of load-shedding during the next six to 12 months.
“Of serious concern is the high levels of unplanned outages, which contributed to the 155 days of load-shedding experienced since January. To limit the stages of load-shedding, Eskom had to heavily rely on the extensive use of open-cycle gas turbines, burning millions of litres of diesel.”
The power utility added: “The 23 October 2022 duct (chimney) structural collapse that has shut down unit 1 of the Kusile power station; and the decision to delay the return to service of units 2 and 3 as a precautionary measure, has inflicted another serious blow to Eskom’s efforts to improve the availability of electricity generation capacity and to reduce the implementation of load-shedding.”
In September, during a media briefing, Eskom’s chief executive, Andre de Ruyter, said there is no reason to believe sabotage played a role in that bout of stage six load-shedding.
Minister losing patience
Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan said he is losing patience with Eskom executives.
In a statement last week, Gordhan called on the Eskom board to “act with urgency” regarding how load-shedding is handled, particularly in the wake of stage six load-shedding.
“I met the board of Eskom yesterday. I have directed them to meet and act with a great sense of urgency to ensure that the management of Eskom gets the country out of level six load-shedding with immediate effect,” he said.
“Power cuts are having a devastating effect on households and livelihoods, investment and the economic climate. This is totally unacceptable. The frequency of breakdowns is certainly attributable to some element of malfunctioning within the Eskom system and possibly sabotage as well.”
Gordhan added that Eskom needs to improve its security to reduce criminality at its power stations.
“We have had to call on law enforcement agencies to show a stronger presence at all Eskom power stations,” he said. “Those who are involved in nefarious activities, beware. We will not tolerate any activities whose purpose is not the national interest.”
Call for renewables
Wayne Alcock, the managing director at Quyn International Outsourcing, said South Africa’s energy crisis escalation into stage five and six load-shedding has highlighted the stark need for businesses, industries and municipalities to generate their own power.
The department of mineral resources and energy last week signed 13 new power generation agreements to bring close to 1 800 megawatts online over the next few years.
During the signing ceremony, Minister Gwede Mantashe accused Eskom of actively campaigning for the overthrow of the state with its “perpetual load-shedding”.