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S. Africa's electricity shortage expected to last three years: Eskom

Xinhua, January 15, 2015 Adjust font size:

South Africa faces an electricity shortage for the coming three years, the country's monopoly power utility Eskom said on Thursday.

This situation "appears to be unavoidable" because South Africa has arrived at a point that "does not allow us to ignore the health of our plants," Eskom Chief Executive Tshediso Matona said in a system status presentation.

"Our reserve margin is so thin, that every incident creates a major systems issue and could also have safety implications for the plant," he warned.

Eskom has implemented a series of rolling blackouts since November last year when some of its coal-burning power stations broke down due to poor maintenance.

"Over the last few months we have seen a significant increase in unplanned maintenance/breakdowns on our plant (between 5000 MW to 9000 MW) that has had a compounding negative effect on power system reliability," Matona said.

This forced the utility to burn diesel to the value of 1 billion rand (about 90 million U.S. dollars) a month to keep the lights on.

"The massive usage of diesel helps to bridge the problem somewhat, but can't help the systemic healing and a shortage of capacity for the coming three years appears to be unavoidable," Matona said.

Particularly in summer, the system is tight all day up to 10 p. m., he said.

"With the reserve margin being low, we do not have enough capacity to meet demand, necessitating planned, controlled and rotational load shedding, to protect the power system from a total country-wide blackout," Matona said.

However, he pledged that Eskom is preparing to minimize the effects of load-shedding.

"We will a create a mechanism to transfer the capabilities of our best in class operators (Koeberg and Matimba) across the rest of the fleet," Matona said.

Eskom, he said, will use Koeberg and Matimba as a blueprint to develop the required skills at a station level.

The utility will bring its suppliers on board to deliver the required maintenance at the best possible quality, he pledged.

"We will create transparency on what additional spend on diesel will do to the country."

Eskom will create a load-shedding schedule that supports South Africans and the economy to the best of its ability, he said. Endi