Eskom warns of a dark winter ahead

State-owned power utility on Tuesday warned that consumers can – in the best-case scenario – expect to soldier through 37 days of load shedding in the upcoming winter season and in the worst-case scenario expect to brave over 100 days of power cuts.

This comes after Eskom escalated load shedding to Stage 4 on Tuesday morning after reinstating the power cuts on Sunday evening.

Eskom’s chief executive for transmission Segomoco Scheepers says the only way to avoid the worst-case scenario is for the utility to contain its unplanned generation losses.

“At the last briefing I think we did give an indication that if we were able to contain the unplanned [breakdowns] below 12 500 megawatts, we should not have any load shedding.”

“Obviously today we are struggling to achieve the lower level of unplanned [breakdowns] that we desire, and it progressively increases to 37 days for winter and in the extreme could be as high as I think we had about 101 days. But that is clearly very far in the extreme,” Scheepers says.

As it stands, the power utility says it currently has 5 124 MW of planned capacity out on maintenance and is experiencing unplanned load losses of 15 672 MW – comprising of 11 164 MW of unplanned full losses and 4 158MW of partial load losses.

Eskom says it hopes to see an end to this spate of load shedding on Thursday evening should the units it expects to return to service during the course of this week do so.

“So, we will be in a better situation by about Thursday evening and Friday. We are hoping that we will reassess and see but we believe that the opportunity to stop load shedding will be there, certainly by Thursday evening, Friday morning,” generation executive Phillip Dukashe says.

Read: Load shedding crisis as Eskom breakdown hits record levels

Bad weather

The utility says the persistent rains seen in the country over the last week, as well as increased demand for power during the Easter break, contributed significantly to the latest round of power cuts.

“We did not have as good an Easter weekend as we would have liked. The heavy rains did not assist. We have been experiencing at certain of our power stations issues with coal that has become too wet to handle. So, when the coal is fit down the shoot into the boilers, it tends to cause blockages and it tends to stick and this has caused us to suffer some losses,” Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter says.

The utility adds that it now looks to replenish its reserves capacity to ensure some units return to service and help stabilise the country’s power supply.