Eskom details World Cup plans

Briefing parliament's joint committees overseeing the state of readiness for the soccer tournament, the power utility vowed there would be no electricity power outages during the World Cup.

"Eskom can assure this house it is ready. We have made all the preparations, we have been on oversight visits and have assisted municipal colleagues," said the power utility's World Cup projects manager Alwie Lester. "There is very little for Eskom to do other than to wait for the event to take place."

Lester said any emergency response would be coordinated from a central command centre based at Eskom's headquarters at Megawatt Park in Johannesburg.

Eskom expects peak demand during the tournament to be 37.24GW – less than 1% more than usual. Lester said Eskom will operate with a reserve margin of between 10% and 15%, obtained by downscaling exports to neighbouring countries and increasing imports from Mozambique's Cahora Bassa by about 500MW.

Formerly mothballed power stations that have been returned to service will add a further 150MW to 300MW.

Power stations have also upped their coal stockpiles to about 42 days instead of the usual 25-day level, Lester said. "The risk of [an interruption in] supply is exceptionally low."

All that remains to be done is to train and deploy additional security staff to protect critical lines of electricity supply, including the lines from Mozambique. This will be accomplished a week before kickoff, while security arrangements for guarding critical power supplies and coal transportation routes have been made in conjunction with the police and intelligence services.

The department of energy, which presented a state of readiness report to parliament after Eskom, also assured parliament that all plans were in place to secure energy and liquid fuel supply.

The department also disclosed that it has been working with the US government and the International Atomic Agency since 2007 to install a system that would withstand nuclear attack.

 - Fin24.com