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Cape Town – While Eskom remained on high alert with load shedding warnings to ensure the national grid remained stable, news that the synchronisation of the first of Medupi power station’s six units could potentially be delayed from its December 24 launch has raised concerns about the country’s energy security.
Eskom spokesperson Andrew Etzinger told Fin24 on Monday that the grid would be fully stable for the majority of the week. “As things stand, no load shedding is required and we would expect that to continue for most of the week,” he said.
Read: Load shedding fears for later this week
“Towards the end of the week, we could be under a spot of bother if we don’t see our diesel reserves recover, but at this stage we are pumping diesel and it’s looking good.”
Why Eskom is load shedding
After a silo collapsed at Majuba Power Station caused a drastic loss of power to the grid, the country was placed on load shedding alert, after a weekend bout of outages on November 2.
Eskom went into overdrive to ensure that the station could deliver some electricity, but it meant the overall grid was on the edge of collapse.
This cliff hanger feeling was further experienced on Friday when low water levels at two pumped storage scheme facilities pushed the country into Stage 2 load shedding, which lasted over the weekend.
A further issue with the supply of diesel meant that Eskom declared a power "emergency" on Sunday and told large industrial users to cut their consumption by up to 10% to ease pressure on the strained national grid.
Read: Eskom issues power emergency
Listen to the full interview with Fin24's Matthew le Cordeur and Etzinger:
Etzinger said the accumulative effect of the issues at the various power stations coupled with low reserves of diesel meant Eskom was not able to meet the entire load, all the time.
“All of these events are interrelated and have knock on effects, unfortunately,” he said. “But we think we are on the road to recovery in terms of technical performance.”
Delay in Medupi synchronisation
Eskom CEO Tshediso Matona will deliver interim results on Tuesday, where a Fin24 source said he would announce a delay in the synchronisation of the first of Medupi power station’s six units.
On September 15, Eskom kicked off a 100 day countdown to “mark the biggest technical milestone to date in Eskom’s R300bn capacity expansion programme aimed at ensuring future security of electricity supply”.
Etzinger did not rule out a delay, explaining that Eskom’s PR campaign should not get in the way of safety. “The unit is basically constructed and is ready to go,” he said.
Watch the video of the unit firing up:
He said they were sterilising the pipes to ensure there was not one microscopic particle within it. “Whether that process takes one day or one week or month, it has to be done properly, otherwise we will create a technical problem in a couple of years’ time,” he said.
“Predicting that is difficult, so yes, we have the aspiration of launching on December 24, but if it takes a few extra days, we’re going to take those days,” he said. “We’re not going to be bound by a PR exercise.”
He said Medupi would supply power fully on a continuous basis by May, 2015. “That would make a big difference to the grid,” he said. “We will have an additional three big units commissioned within the next 18 months before we really … start declaring victory.”
Eskom has acknowledged that mistakes have been made in the construction of both the Kusile and Medupi coal-fired power stations and the state-owned enterprise is taking action to penalise contractors for failing to do their work properly.
READ: We made mistakes at Medupi and Kusile
Public awareness
Etzinger said load shedding was avoidable if the public headed the call to monitor their electricity usage.
The public have raised concerns that the load shedding schedule was not followed. “It is a very understandable concern from the public,” he said, adding that both Eskom and its municipal partners have load shedding schedules, but that sometimes mistakes are made. “Collectively, we must say that we can do better and we will try to do better and apologies for that.”
He said that load shedding stages do change, which impact the hours when load shedding occurs, and the public should keep an eye on social media like the Eskom twitter page and online media like Fin24 for updates.
A useful app is My Eskom, which helps users see how much electricity they use and when times are critical.
Etzinger said the Eskom load shedding website was criticised for not being user friendly and those ideas are being explored to improve the user experience.
He said stats from their call centres showed that they were getting to 99% of their calls and helping customers, which he said was a marked improvement since the last load shedding crisis in March this year. “Give our call centres a call on 08600ESKOM (0860037566),” he said. “They are equipped to help.”
He advised the public to print out the full load shedding schedule to avoid getting hold of a congested call centre or an overloaded website.
See these tips from Eskom:
- Fin24.
