Minister of Electricity Kgosiensho Ramokgopa during a press conference on January 9, 2024. Image: GCIS
The expanded load shedding is likely to continue into Wednesday after a boiler tube leak knocked out nine generators and plunged the country into a stage six power outage on Friday night.
Power Minister Kgosiensho Ramokgopa said at a press conference on Sunday that 4,400 megawatts of power generation had been shut down from last Wednesday to Friday due to a boiler tube leak. At the same time, renewable electricity generation was also lower than expected due to “climatic conditions”.
“We basically had nine units that contributed 400MW of this over two days,” Ramokgopa said. “We're seeing clusters of these units failing at the same time. Many of these units are large units…as a result of these boiler tube leaks, we're seeing essentially four-stage load shedding. Juxtapose this with the fact that we still have 7,000MW of planned maintenance.”
Two of them have since returned to service, and “we expect the last unit that failed on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to be back by Wednesday.”
By Tuesday, South Africans will see a significant reduction in load shedding and “return to levels 4, 3, 2, 1, with no regular load shedding from Wednesday onwards.”
Boiler tube leaks are a major concern
For now, “a situation could arise where we go to a lower stage, perhaps stage 5, just to manage the water levels in the protected area, i.e. the dam, but with the aim of reaching a level below stage 4. “We predict we'll get there by Wednesday,” he said.
Eskom management identified boiler tube leaks as a major concern impairing the availability of power generation units. He said utilities are currently working directly with original equipment manufacturers to repair equipment. They say this is because they “know the DNA of the device.”
As part of Eskom's planned maintenance, a significant portion of the units will be brought back online from early to late March, “so we will be moving from the 7,000 MW level to around 6,000 MW to a lower level of 5,000 MW. Masu.”
This is where South Africans will see significant improvements in the intensity of offloading, Ramokgopa said. “We anticipate that there may be periods during the day when load shedding does not occur. Of course, some troops have committed to return, but they are not returning on time,” he said, adding that this remains the case. It added that this was a particular focus and concern for Eskom management.
'Inherent Risk'
He said Tier 6 was last imposed on the country in November and was an “outlier”. Until then, Stage 6 was “a common occurrence in the quest to manage the integrity of the power grid.” [and] Protect the grid.
“But one of the things we've been successful at since November is making sure we don't get to stage 6. The fact that we're ramping up planned maintenance means we're not compromising the available buffer. means.
“If a unit in a cluster fails, and we get to a situation where a large unit fails, we don't have the space and we have no choice but to increase load shedding. We know that's an inherent risk. We accepted, but we also recognized that there were rewards for this approach.”
Mr Ramokgopa said that because Eskom receives financial support from the National Treasury, “it is important that we do the right thing and that we can improve the health and performance of these forces and we invest in them.” We need to do it…we don't have enough money.” -Long-term pain and long-term gain. ”
This is because when these units return from planned maintenance they will be healthier and closer to their design capacity. “I have told the state that we are not going to cut corners in our efforts to solve burden reduction…
“The important thing is to do things the right way so that you can make sure that you regain the megawatts that you lost over a period of time as a result of not focusing on maintenance, and you accept that as part of your maintenance.” Strategy If we change, we expose ourselves to inherent risks. ”
Mr Ramogkopa said that when a unit in a cluster fails, load shedding is likely to be enhanced, which is why the country is experiencing high levels of load shedding.
“Be methodical”
He said fixing the power grid “requires very careful attention and investment in the right steps.”
“There are always going to be setbacks, and of course we have had them from Friday until today, but we will recover…As a period of time passes, these setbacks become smaller and smaller in nature. The intensity of the load will be reduced. Hair loss will be reduced.”
Ramakgopa said it's easy to measure the team's performance by the amount of time the lights were on during this period compared to the same period last year. “If there is improvement, the lights will be on most of the time. It means the team is moving in the right direction.”