Nothing to see here: Ramokgopa offers same list of load shedding ‘solutions’

Electricity Minister Kgosientsho ‘Sputla’ Ramokgopa, following a month-long tour of Eskom power stations and meetings with its executives, presented a multi-point plan to ease load shedding to the ANC’s National Executive Committee (NEC) this weekend.

Many more billions in diesel will have to be burned (R30 billion). Eskom will focus on its five worst-performing power stations. Some additional power will be imported. Oh, and there’s some pie-in-the-sky stuff too, like remotely switching off of geysers and exempting national key points from load shedding.

In short, Ramokgopa learnt nothing new.

The plan is focused on the next six months, beginning in May. In theory, the measures should see an additional 4 500MW available, which will help cushion the impact of far higher demand in winter months.

Read: Eskom rushes back to Stage 6 as breakdowns hit fleet

Winter’s already here. It’s all too little, too late. But that’s been the case for most of government’s ‘interventions’ regarding the energy crisis.

Burning through its budget

The R30 billion for diesel procurement seems to be a figure plucked out of thin air.

This is effectively the limit in how much diesel Eskom is able to burn (roughly R2.5 billion a month) due to the physical constraints in transporting it to its open-cycle gas turbine (OCGT) plants. Even with an unlimited budget, Eskom cannot burn more diesel than this.

To fund the R30 billion – easily at least 50% more than was spent on diesel in its last financial year, Ramokgopa says Eskom will use funds from the 18.65% tariff increase approved by Nersa and those allocated to it in February’s budget. It remains to be seen whether Eskom’s budget allows it to spend this money on ‘emergency’ primary energy costs (versus, say, maintenance or capital expenditure).

Read: ANC pushes Ramaphosa to resolve energy row

If Eskom had the luxury of burning this much diesel last year (its fiscal ends in March), we would not have had near-constant load shedding between October 2022 and March 2023, and almost certainly would not have endured bouts of Stage 6 “until further notice”.

Towards the end of its financial year, once it had burned through its entire R11 billion budget, Eskom was scrounging for whatever millions it could find to buy diesel.

Minister of Public Enterprises Pravin Gordhan “found” 50 million litres at Petro SA. The exact method of funding this remains opaque after National Treasury denied Eskom’s requests for additional funding for diesel. Now suddenly, there’s R30 billion available.

Five worst power stations

Ramokgopa also recommended that “the government should consider buying directly from suppliers … so whatever savings can be made by cutting the middle man”.

Former Eskom CEO André de Ruyter proposed exactly this, on numerous occasions. In late December, the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy denied an application by Eskom for a wholesale licence for diesel.

Not a word from Sputla about those billions in outstanding rebates from Sars.

The minister’s second proposal is for Eskom to improve the performance of its five worst-performing power stations, Tutuka, Kendal, Duvha, Majuba and Matla. Wow.

Eskom’s been banging this drum – the focus on these five plants – for more than a year now.

Meanwhile, the first three of these have long been the ‘most broken’ of the utility’s power stations. In 2021, they accounted for roughly half of the megawatts lost due to unplanned breakdowns across Eskom’s fleet. Nothing has changed.

In January, we were told by Eskom that within six months, 1 862MW would be “recovered” from Tutuka, Kendal, Duvha and Matla. That deadline is July. What are the odds of this being on track?

Same old story

Ramakgopa also said additional focus will be placed on Medupi and Kusile. However, projects are already under way to get four units that are offline due to self-inflicted long-term outages (Medupi Unit 4 and Kusile units 1, 2, 3) back up and running. The commissioning of Kusile Unit 5 (after a delay due to a fire) will see 3 600MW added to the grid over the next 18 months. Again, none of this is new.

He stated that government had managed to secure a second-hand generator in the Netherlands that is 15 years old. No real details were given. One can only assume this is to replace Medupi Unit 4.

Things get murkier after the six-month mark. Here, according to the minister, there remains a plan to procure an additional 1 000MW from Mozambique. It is speculated some of this will come from idle heavy fuel oil generators.

He reiterated the plan to add an additional “minimum” 12 000MW in the next 18 months. There’s some double counting in this number, with the “recoveries” at Kusile and Medupi and the commissioning of the final unit at the former (Unit 6) totalling 4 400MW, over a third. This is not new capacity. It is Eskom capacity that has failed due to human error.

In the months or years ahead, could we see any possibility of additional units being out of commission for long periods due to “human error”? Of course, this remains a material risk.

The plan to reduce demand by switching off geysers remotely is some serious pipe dream stuff. Sure, this technology exists and is in place – to varying extents – in certain municipalities. But deploying this broadly on a nationwide scale is going to take many, many, years. Assuming government’s pace in implementing its National Energy Crisis Committee (Necom) plan as a guide, we may have most geysers in the country on remote switches by, what, 2030?

Load shedding exemptions?

Finally, the plan to exempt certain facilities from load shedding is completely unworkable.

It was inserted into the short-lived state of disaster regulations because it seems, to a non-technically minded person, ‘simple’ to implement. Plus it makes for good PR ahead of elections next year.

But entire neighbourhoods cannot be arbitrarily exempted from load shedding simply because they contain a police station or hospital. Fairly quickly, you end up with more than half a city’s grid being exempt. Do cities then increase the intensity of load shedding in areas without key points to offset the exempt suburbs?

Eskom itself, in a dry, technical paper titled “Understanding the embedded nature of distribution customers and the limitations this imposes on protecting designated customers from load shedding” explains that for this to work, distributors (Eskom directly or municipalities) would have to install special lines from feeder substations to only these key points. The timeline on getting just one of these in place? 36 months. Good luck with that.

Ramokgopa also admitted that it was not “technically possible” to end load shedding by the end of 2023.

But we all knew this already too …

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