Rolling black-outs - Eskom

[Mud Dog]

Black-outs this week, power constraints ahead

South Africans will be faced with rolling black-outs this week after a 40-metre high coal silo collapsed at Eskom’s Majuba power station in Mpumalanga at midday on Saturday.

This comes after countrywide rolling black-outs were implemented from 8h00 to 2h:00 on Sunday.

Eskom is working around the clock to adapt operations at Majuba and believes it may be able to limit the load shedding to Monday night, Wednesday night and the whole of Thursday, provided nothing else goes wrong.

collapsed-silo.jpg

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Slipping through the cracks

Newly appointed Eskom chief executive Tshediso Matona (pictured) had a baptism of fire on Sunday when he had to explain the collapse at a media briefing. After being criticised for releasing a statement shortly before 23:00 on Saturday about a crack in the silo, without any mention that it had actually collapsed about ten hours earlier, Matona said there was “no foul play” and committed the organisation to transparency.


Matona said workers doing maintenance work on the conveyor belt saw coal leaking from about 30m up the 40m silo at 12:30 on Saturday. A crack was then detected and al staff were evacuated. At 13:12 the silo, storing 10 000 tons of coal, collapsed. Nobody was injured.

Eskom executives said it is only the second time ever that a silo of this kind has collapsed anywhere in the world. The silo is only 13 years old and is supposed to have a design life of 50 years. The last civil digital inspection was done in September last year and it was found to be in good condition.

Eskom, together with the Department of Labour, will investigate the cause and hopes to finalise the investigation in the next three months.

Early indications are that there was not enough rebar to strengthen the concrete structure and the extent of corrosion discovered after the collapse is of great concern. Samples will be taken as part of the investigation.

The other two silos are being fed from the collapsed one and they will also be properly inspected before taking on any further load.

When questioned, Eskom officials admitted that the coal stockyard at Majuba has been decommissioned earlier this year as “it has been ineffective for the last ten years”.

Eskom nevertheless said there was no relation to the silo collapse, which it considers an isolated incident. There is no indication of sabotage.

The whole failure was captured on camera, which will be of great value to the investigation.

In pictures

The following slides from the Eskom presentation show how the system works and where the collapse happened:

The coal is fed by a double conveyor belt from the stockyard to a central silo. The central silo feeds coal into units 3 and 4 and to two other silos on either side of it that respectively feed units 1 and 2 and 5 and 6. The green arrows indicate the coal feed.

Majuba+1.jpg (107.36 KiB) Viewed 4380 times

The central silo, market with a red circle, collapsed which disrupted the whole supply system.

Majuba+2.jpg (116.67 KiB) Viewed 4380 times

The blue blocks indicate the alternative coal feed Eskom hopes to implement utilising trucks. Unit three can be fed from unit two, although that will only allow it to operate at 75% capacity. Unit 4 will be out of service for the time being. Eskom will use the opportunity to do the planned maintenance on it that was scheduled for the end of November.

Majuba+3.jpg (115.26 KiB) Viewed 4380 times

The fallout

Officials are now trying to arrange for permits to transport mobile coal feeders to the site and enable manual coal feed to four of Majuba’s six units. One mobile feeder is already on site and the other was expected on Sunday night.

Fifteen truck loads will be required per hour at each of the remaining two silos.

The utility is also trying to source a further 60 to 70 trucks to move the coal on the site. These will be additional to the 500-odd trucks that deliver coal to Majuba daily. Majuba does not have a dedicated mine and is dependent on coal being delivered by truck and by train.

Group Executive Thava Govender said this operation is very challenging as the site will be congested and space has to be found to stockpile the coal close to the other silos. He said Eskom actually has officials directing the traffic on site to prevent trucks colliding.

The cost of this operation has not been calculated and it is also not clear what will be done to repair the power station in the long run. Eskom is currently focusing on getting the alternative coal feed established and safeguarding the power system in the next week. As the situation unfolds and more information becomes available, it will determine the way forward.

For the time being Eskom will have to rely more on using its costly open-cycle gas turbines. Group executive for sustainability Dr Steve Lennon said the cost of running these plants is considerably lower than the cost of black-outs to the economy, should they not be utilised.

Load-shedding

Lennon admitted that Eskom and some municipalities were caught unaware by the need for load shedding on a Sunday. Eskom and some big municipalities had no load shedding schedules for Sundays and the utility decided on Saturday night to apply the Saturday schedule to Sunday. The City of Tshwane did the same thing.

Eskom has published load shedding schedules. Click here for the schedule for municipal customers and click here for the schedule for Eskom direct customers.

Lennon said Eskom is working with municipalities to close the gaps in this regard. He said it may be very difficult for many municipalities to stick strictly to the schedules, as they literally have to send somebody with a bakkie to switch an area off manually.

He said the power system will remain extremely constrained for November and the first half of December and again from the second half of January until the end of March.

Tough year

Eskom said the investigation into the reasons behind the power emergency blamed on wet coal early this year has been completed. It will now go through “governance processes” and a decision will be taken on how the results will be communicated to the public.

The investigation into the incident that damaged Duvha unit 3 in March has also been completed. Negotiations with the insurer is at an advanced stage and the findings will be made public after it has been finalised.

[Pumba]

Nou kan ons meer braai

[4x4BEES]

Nou kan ons meer braai

+100000000000000000


























Net jammer dit is so sad dat ons moet lag

[Masekind]

Kyk hier by ons gebeur niks nie eers daai goed nie (load shedding of black outs)

[Mud Dog]

Eskom expected to miss another Medupi deadline
(Antoinette Slabbert)

Eskom would not over the weekend confirm increasing reports from its Medupi construction site that the deadline to synchronize its unit 6 to the national grid on 24 December will not be met.

Since Friday, Moneyweb has received reports from different sources at Medupi that the Christmas Eve deadline will not be met as it takes longer than Eskom anticipated to do the necessary testing and fine-tuning of several systems in preparation for the synchronisation.

Eskom spokesperson Andrew Etzinger on Sunday did not respond directly to the allegations, apart from saying an update will be given at the utility’s results presentation on Tuesday.

Sources at Medupi said tension is running high on site, with contractors having known for some time that the deadline is unachievable, but Eskom refusing to acknowledge the reality of the situation. Contractors fear that they will again be blamed for Eskom’s failures and its efforts to comply with political promises, rather than techinical imperatives.

One source said the synchronisation won’t be possible before January 15 and another would not even venture an opinion.

On September 15 Eskom started the countdown from 100 days to synchronisation, saying: “The event will mark the biggest technical milestone to date in Eskom’s R300 billion capacity expansion programme aimed at ensuring future security of electricity supply.”

Unit 6 is already several years late and there is little clarity on the intervals at which the other five units will be completed. Initially the plan was to deliver the units at intervals of six months, but Eskom has already indicated that it will take longer to deliver unit 5.

Eskom earlier said after synchronisation it “will take several months for Unit 6 to ramp up to full and stable power as part of the standard commissioning and optimisation process.”

The power station will ulitmately have six units, each generating 794MW. Once complete, Medupi will be the fourth-largest coal power station in the southern hemisphere and the largest dry-cooled power station in the world.

A further delay in the completion of unit 6 will be a serious blow to Eskom on many fronts and the utility’s problems will be passed on to the ordinary South Africans.

The project is way over the earlier budget of R78 billion - Eskom currently puts it at R105 billion. It is however widely speculated that the cost may escalate to at least R130 billion. Further delays will probably have a cost impact.

Load shedding
A further delay will come as South Africans suffer country-wide load shedding. Eskom currently barely manages to keep the lights on during the week and is trying to schedule inevitable load shedding over weekends to limit its destructive effect on economic activity.

The longer commissioning of new generation capacity is delayed, the longer Eskom will be running its aging generation fleet at unsustainable levels with little space to do the necessary maintenance.

This will see South Africans increasingly subjected to power cuts as the fleet deteriorates.

Since the beginning of the year two major incidents have seen units going off-line for extended periods. Duvha unit 3 has not come back online since an incident there in March. The results of in investigation have not yet been made public. On November 1 a concrete coal silo at Majuba collapsed, crippling the power station and increasing operating cost by an unknown margin.

As Eskom calls on South Africans to switch off in order to reduce electricty demand, its sales volumes and revenue decrease, necessitating further tariff increases to compensate the utility for the reduced income. Lower sales revenue was one of the motivations for a recent further increase in electricity tariffs next year by 12.69% instead of the 8% granted earlier.

The delays have further deprived Eskom from revenue from selling electricty generated at the new power station, while having to pay the debt incurred for the build project.

The financially troubled utility had to call on government as shareholder to help it stay afloat and National Treasury has comitted to an aid package of R20 billion as well as the possible conversion of R60 billion of debt into equity.

The utlitmate burden is on tax payers and is one of the factors that may lead to tax increases next year.

[Thabogrobler]

Oh, the fun trying to work when there is no lectric!!!

[pietpetoors]

ESKOM has admitted that another one of its coal-storage silos at Majuba power station is cracked and has been taken out of use and barricaded for safety reasons.

The discovery of the second crack — this time in silo 30 — comes after the collapse of silo 20 on November 1, which crippled the power system and sent the country into load-shedding. Majuba is operating at about 60% capacity at the moment.

Trade union Solidarity highlighted the existence of the second crack in a press statement on Thursday.

In reply to questions from Business Day, Eskom said that following the collapse of silo 20, the Eskom engineering team had inspected the Majuba silos externally and "observed crack defects in silo 30, approximately 2m from the top".

The company said that silo 10 and silo 30 had been taken out of operation since the incident for safety reasons. The silos are also barricaded and structures "that were identified to pose a safety risk will be demolished as part of the safeguarding of the area".

Read the rest here:
http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/201 ... o-collapse" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Mud Dog]

Understanding Eskom's load shedding decisions


Eskom has recently changed its thinking about load shedding and, with the blessing of the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa), households rather than industry will bear the brunt going forward.

It is also by design that load shedding occurred during the weekend, when it is less disruptive to the economy.

“It is the lesser of two evils,” Eskom spokesperson Andrew Etzinger said.

Moneyweb reported in September that Eskom applied to Nersa for amendments to the load shedding protocol in order to limit the damage to the economy.

The application entailed that households rather than industry, would be the first port of call when it became necessary to reduce demand in order to protect the electricity system from total collapse.

Etzinger confirmed on Monday that the application was granted and two instances of countrywide load shedding in November were the result of the new approach.

Etzinger said Eskom does not expect load shedding to be a regular occurrence going forward, but if it happens, it will preferably be over weekends and residential customers will be affected before industry.

On Sunday Eskom did call on its industrial customers to reduce demand by 10% over and above the stage 2 load shedding already implemented countrywide. The declaration of an emergency at the same time was not an indication that the situation deteriorated beyond control. It is a requirement when industrial customers are called upon to reduce demand, Etzinger said.

Nersa also granted Eskom permission to take over the direct control of load shedding in cases where municipalities struggle or fail to manage the process as required. This means that Eskom will simply go ahead and switch off the feed to that municipality for the required period. If the municipality has more than one feeding point, it may accordingly switch off one or more feeds in order to achieve the required savings, Etzinger said. If there is only one feed, the total supply to the municipality will be cut.

He said in certain cases municipalities have requested Eskom to take over.

Eskom has to account to Nersa after each load shedding incident and has to explain each decision in detail. Its actions with regard to these newly acquired powers will form part of such reports and will be scrutinised by the regulator, Etzinger says.

Pump storage schemes

He says that Eskom has been running its pump storage and diesel plants extraordinarily hard since the collapse of the coal silo at its Majuba power station on November 1.

In the past, the two pump storage schemes - Palmiet in the Western Cape and Drakensberg in KwaZulu-Natal - were run for only a few hours at a time. The units generate electricity when water is released from a high level. The force of the falling water turns the turbine that effects the generation. The water collects at the bottom of the system and has to be pumped back to continue generating electricity.

For every hour of pumping the plant can provide two-thirds of an hour of release, or put differently, for every ten hours of electricity generation 15 hours are needed to pump the water back. In the past the plant was run for short periods and there was enough time to pump the water back every night.

In the past three weeks however the schemes were run virtually from 6:00 to 20:00. Towards the end of the week Eskom ran out of water to release, since there wasn’t enough time to pump it back. The decision was taken to take the units off-line and pump back over weekends, when the damage to the economy was less than during the week.

See an animated graphic of pumped storage here.

With regard to the open-cycle gas turbines Eskom planned to utilise the diesel gobbling units 11% of the time, measured over a week. Due to the tightness of the system this increased to 37%, which placed pressure on the diesel stock and the supply chain towards the end of the week.

Etzinger said Eskom conducts load shedding countrywide and does not require bigger sacrifices from certain areas or towns. The required savings is determined in proportion to the demand from those customers.

He says over the weekend Eskom escalated its load shedding from phase 1 to phase 2. Some customers did not realise that and did not update the information they got from their load shedding schedules. In some cases that created the impression that load shedding schedules were not being followed.

While Eskom sticks to its published schedules, it is however clear that some municipalities are struggling, he said. Eskom is trying to assist municipalities in this regard.

Customers can at any time go to http://loadshedding.eskom.co.za/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; to check whether Eskom is load shedding and if so, what stage of load shedding is being implemented. The website also contains a link to Eskom and municipal distributors’ load shedding schedules.

Some of the bigger metros like the City of Tshwane, City of Cape Town and Johannesburg’s City Power also use Twitter to update customers regularly.

[Mud Dog]

Wednesday, 26 November 2014 News

Tshediso Matona, CEO of Eskom
We'll be living on the edge


Consumers should brace themselves as Eskom balances the cost of running its open-cycle gas turbines (OCGTs) and the need to take power stations out of service for much needed maintenance, with the need to keep the lights on.

Eskom CEO Tshediso Matona said there will be trade-offs going forward, and “we’ll be living on the edge”.

At the announcement of Eskom’s interim results on Tuesday Matona said Eskom is not prepared to compromise its maintenance programme and when the choice has to be made between running the costly OCGTs beyond what the budget permits and keeping the lights on, government will have to give guidance.

Results

In the six months to the end of December Eskom reported an increase of 5.4% in revenue to R81.9 billion, reflecting the 8% tariff increase. Profit was down 24% to R9.3 billion and Eskom expects the profit to be virtually wiped out towards year-end. (Especially if they pay themselves 6 figure bonuses again!)

Eskom has historically made most of its profit in the first half of the financial year thanks to higher time-of-use tariffs applicable in the winter and the fact that most of its maintenance expenditure took place during summer. In the second half the utility typically broke even, which resulted in the interim profit being largely unchanged at year-end.

In the current financial year Eskom expects that pattern to change as a loss of R8.8 billion is projected for the second half, leaving Eskom with an expected R0.5 billion profit at year-end in March.

CFO Tsholofelo Molefe ascribed the decline in profit and expected loss in H2 to declining sales volumes due to the continued impact of strikes in the mining sector, the contraction of the gold mining industry, the closure of BHP Billiton’s Bayside smelter as well as the increase in primary energy cost.

Primary energy includes coal and diesel for the OCGTs. During the reporting period it increased by 22% to R38 billlion.

Matona said Eskom’s mix of coal supply contracts currently includes too many expensive short-term contracts. Ideally Eskom would prefer longer-term contracts and the utility has to address this, he said. The diesel cost has increased due to the extensive use of the plants to prevent power cuts.

Molefe said other costs, including staff costs were flat.

The utility also made a R2.5 billion provision for penalties :wth: because it cannot take up the coal contracted for its Medupi power station, because of delays in the completion of the project.

Cash and cash equivalents declined from R30 billion a year before and R19.6 billion at year-end in March to R12.9 billion. This was largely due to outstanding debtors, as arrears municipal debtors and arrears debt from Soweto grew to R4 billion each past the year-end.

Extreme solution

Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown said at the presentation that she is working with the inter-ministerial task team on a “extreme” solution for unsustainable municipalities that cannot pay their Eskom accounts. The task team includes herself, the ministers of finance, energy and constitutional development and traditional affairs.

Brown said some of these municipalities won’t be able to pay, even if their electricity supply is cut off. “And you cannot just cut off Harrismith where there is a Nestlé factory and 400 to 500 people will lose their jobs,” she said. “You also cannot ring-fence such plants and sometimes the residents pay their electricity bills, but the municipality uses that money for operational expenses.”

She did not want to explain what the plan entails, because it has not been finalised.

Government aid, Medupi

Molefe said Eskom is very worried about its high debt levels and is “jittery” about the negative outlook ratings agency Standard & Poor’s ascribed to it when it recently affirmed its credit rating. She said any further downgrades may trigger covenants.

Molefe said government’s aid package will help in the short term, but she is working with the inter-ministerial committee on long-term solutions.

Matona said plans are on track for the synchronisation of unit 6 of its Medupi power station at the end of the year. While December 24 has been set as deadline, “risks remain which may cause delays”. Full commercial operation is expected six months after synchronisation, he said.

[Mud Dog]

Just how bad are things at Eskom?
(By Hilton Tarrant)

The speed at which South Africa’s electricity grid came close to breaking point on Friday illustrates how razor-thin Eskom’s reserve margin is. Technically speaking, at times it’s running a negative reserve margin. This is an emergency.

Last Monday, Eskom spokesperson Andrew Etzinger was “cautiously optimistic” that there would be no load shedding during the week “or in the near future”. That prognosis changed by Thursday when we were “urged” to “prepare” for load shedding later on in the week or over the weekend. By Thursday afternoon, we were into Stage 2 load shedding (2 000MW) for the evening peak. We started Stage 2 at 11am on Friday, and within an hour, Eskom was knee-deep in a crisis. For the next ten hours, Eskom was at Stage 3 (4 000MW).

The emergency continued into Saturday, with Stage 3 load shedding running from 6am on to 10pm (including, significantly, industrial customers). Etzinger then started referencing the “recent” blackouts in “California, parts of Europe, India”, and warned (pre-empted?) that if the grid were to collapse in South Africa, it would take weeks to restart.

Longer, without warning

What’s most revealing about the timelines through last week is how quickly Eskom went from a situation that was manageable (and that it had predicted) to an all-out emergency. One can only imagine the chaos between 11am and noon on Friday. How do you lose 2 000MW of generating capacity in an hour?

The load shedding time-blocks are creeping longer, faster. Stage 3 load shedding ran until 10pm on Friday. This is a Friday night in December, where demand is not anywhere near peak. Stage 3 ran from 6am to 10pm on Saturday. This is completely unprecedented!

Eskom has also seemed to very quietly rewritten the rules. Stage 3 load shedding used to allow for 3 000MW of “load to be shed”. Now, that number is suddenly 4 000MW.

Capacity

In its (quietly published) System Status Bulletin 302 from Thursday, Eskom stated that it had “28 400 MW (including open cycle gas turbines)” capacity available on that day, with peak demand “forecast at 30 181 MW”.

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Given that its open cycle gas turbines are capable of providing just over 2 000 MW (1 332MW peak at Ankerlig, 740MW peak at Gourikwa), and that it’s using its two pump storage schemes (Drakensburg and Palmiet) overtime to generate as much as 1 400MW, Eskom’s base load power stations are currently generating under 25 000 MW.

Remove the notoriously unreliable 1 500MW of imports from Cahora Bassa (there are maintenance windows practically every weekend which exacerbate the situation, along with continual issues on the transmission lines from Mozambique) and you get a figure of closer to 23 500MW. That’s 55% of its total capacity online.

Add back the Cahora Bassa supply (which is base load power), and you get to 60%. In other words, 40% of Eskom’s total generating capacity is offline (or, in the case of the gas turbines, perpetually close to running out of diesel).

On Thursday, Eskom put its current planned maintenance at 5 295 MW, with unplanned outages of 8 377MW. That unplanned figure is frightening, especially when you compare it with Medupi’s total generating capacity of 4 800MW (at current timelines, estimated to be completely online by the end of 2018).

No more room to move

By its own published numbers, Eskom has 42 072 MW of generating capacity. The truth is that number hasn’t grown significantly since 2008/2009 (when its capacity was 40 503 MW). It’s increased by 4% (net) … but how, if it added 6 137 MW of capacity since 2005?

Electricity demand in SA is at a 7y low. But the decline in generation plant performance is faster than the decline in electricity demand.
— Chris Yelland (@chrisyelland) December 4, 2014

The first problem is that the rapid decline in plant performance has offset two-thirds of this additional capacity. It’s been adding generation capacity to stand still. The second problem is it’s run out of quick-fixes. This is the first year in nine that Eskom hasn’t added a single megawatt to generating capacity. We’ve got no option but to wait for the “imminent” synchronisation of the first unit at Medupi. Best case, that’ll happen by June next year. The delivery of each Kusile unit would be approximately 12 months after the corresponding ones at Medupi.

megawatts.gif (8.99 KiB) Viewed 4184 times

No wonder experts on Moneyweb on Friday were recommending that South Africans buy a generator.

Crisis management

Thankfully, after a few weekends of trying, municipalities have got their load shedding schedules mostly accurate. In case you were wondering, Joburg City Power seems to shed load by having a fleet of contractors drive around neighbourhoods, popping open distribution boxes to switch them off (and then back on again). Every now and then there’s chaos, however. Like Friday, where the severity of the situation caught everyone offguard.

Ways to stay positive in Jozi during #loadshedding: 1. Avoid driving anywhere. 2. Avoid staying at home. 3. Avoid going out. Easy!
— Mike Stopforth (@mikestopforth) December 5, 2014

At least, with some predictability, the inconvenience over (especially) weekends is manageable. With the imminent shutdown of heavy industry for a month in a week’s time, Eskom will have some reprieve.

It will probably mean that Etzinger, the calm and completely unflappable “voice” (/face) of the utility, will be able to take some sort of break. That doesn’t mean he’s as transparent as he was in 2008. Eskom has become decidedly (deliberately?) more opaque this time round.

There’s near-zero insight into which power stations are offline. Instead, we’re simply told of the “loss of additional generation” or that “certain units have tripped”.

Brian Dames, who – let’s not forget – kept the lights on for his entire tenure as chief executive of Eskom must be relieved he’s no longer in charge.

Pretty sure Brian Dames is glad he's no longer in charge of this Eskom mess.


Then again, in large corporations, chief executives are largely oblivious to day-to-day operations. Their job is to look six, 12, 18, 24 months ahead. Dames would’ve surely had a view a year ago of what was likely to happen in two or three or four quarters’ time. He might not have known for sure, but perhaps he had the slightest of inklings.

He resigned on December 5 2013. That should tell you all you need to know.

Since the Majuba silo disaster (or in Eskom parlance, “crack”), we’ve had more load shedding than we’ve had since 2008. In winter, Eskom was forced to shed load on March 6 and June 11, 12 and 17. That’s before this latest nightmare which, based on the past week, is only getting worse.

Can it get worse?

What happens after Stage 3? What happens when there's a shortfall of more than 4 000MW?

There are murmurs that ‘Stage 3B’ (which we did or didn’t reach on Friday, depending on who you believe) is effectively Stage 4. Monday afternoon’s media briefing from Eskom chief executive Tshediso Matona will go one of two ways: either things are going to get better from here, or they’re not.

And our indefatigable Minister of Energy, Tina Joemat Pettersson? Last we heard, she’d be running “nuclear vendor parade workshops” in the Drakensburg (and no, she wasn’t in China with President Jacob Zuma at the end of last week). She literally hasn’t been seen for weeks.

Minister of Public Enterprises Lynne Brown made her last public comments on Eskom at the utility’s financial results presentation on November 25. One wonders if either of them will be seated next to Matona at Megawatt Park on Monday.

Strange that one has not heard a word from our President Jacob Zuma & Minister of Energy Tina Joemat-Pettersson on the #Eskom energy crisis

[Niel]

Strange that one has not heard a word from our President Jacob Zuma & Minister of Energy Tina Joemat-Pettersson on the #Eskom energy crisis

Andy the Afrikaans term comes to mind - "hulle is n NUL op die kontrak". Why they still get some of the tax payers money is ........

[ChrisF]

Andy I was listening to some sober minded professional electrical engineers this morning.

WHEN Madupi comes on line, and the date seems to be an ever moving target, we are NOT out the woods !!

To properly service the existing units will mean we are still on the verge of load shedding - for the next TWO to THREE YEARS !



the truly scary part is we should be out on tender on the next set NOW !

The current issues are just a moment in time, we NEED to look ahead and be pro-active to solve this in the long run....... except we are NOT seeing any of this ....




there are already people calling for PERMANENT stage 3 load shedding - to FIXED shedules. Any excess period to be used to maintain the existing equipment. THIS is probably one of the more sober minded approaches.

[Bushwacker]

Perhaps this will explain why we have regular BLACK –outs!

Not really intended for the public, BUT, amazing how pics like these can get out even after Eskom put a blanket of secrecy around the whole incident. Eskom like hiding stuff like this?

So what happened at Duhva power station and the busted turbine?

They were doing a test of the turbine over speed protection system, and in short, the protection did not kick in. Conventional wisdom tells me that there should be a better way to test a protection system than to try and destroy the turbine and see if it feels like protecting itself, but that’s basically what they did.

The turbine has a governor valve which controls the amount of steam coming into the turbine In order to keep it running at the right speed (3000 rpm for our grid frequency) and then it has a main isolation valve to shut the steam off completely. The protections systems (of which there are 3 independent systems, and a dude with his finger on the emergency button) are supposed to close this main isolation valve in a fraction of a second when the turbine overspeeds.

So they get ready for the test, they dump a helluva lot of steam onto the turbine, speed starts going crazy, it went from 3000 RPM to 4500 RMP in ten seconds (they are generally only designed for 10 to 15% overspeed, all three protection systems should have kicked in by the time you get to 110%). Anyway, I don’t know why, but all three systems failed, and the dude with his finger on the manual trip button wasn’t at his post. So the result was a big bang, some fire and a lot of steam going where it shouldn’t go.

Scary thing is Duvha has a shared turbine hall. All six units are placed in one long straight stripe, with no missile shield between them. And if you look at the third last pic you can see how big that shaft is, if that landed on another turbine it would have destroyed that too. They are very lucky they didn’t lose the entire station.

So anyway, what gets reported in the news? “Unforeseen maintenance” at one of the units at Duvha requires it to remain shut down for 18 months. understatement of the century in my book. But you shut off the containment ventilation system at Koeberg for one hour and a radiation alarm goes off, then it’s a front page news national crisis. I give up.

[Thabogrobler]

On the news this afternoon Eskdom's PR guys admitted that they are 4years behind on the power ststion maintenance.

Maybe more like 14 years?

[GI Jane]

I think that report about Duvha is an old story from a few years back that has been brought out. It is all over the social media as well ....

[ChrisF]

I think that report about Duvha is an old story from a few years back that has been brought out. It is all over the social media as well ....

jip, dates back to 2011

[Froll]

I think that report about Duvha is an old story from a few years back that has been brought out. It is all over the social media as well ....

jip, dates back to 2011

I agree with you Val, that is an old one. Having done a good amount of overspeed as well as underspeed tests . The chances of that happening is very slim and in my opinion due to negligence or ignorance. There has to be a senior shift supervisor, artisan and turbine operator all present during a test. A turbine is not on line at the time of test and is manually tripped 300 rpm above or below 3000 rpm.

[Mud Dog]

Whatever happened and is still to happen, I think we're in for the 'long haul' on this issue. I tend to agree with Chris but would venture to peg it more in the region of four years. This will mean that a large cross section of the populace will during this time opt for some form of alternate power, be it gas, generators, solar panels and solar geysers, whatever their pockets can afford. More of them sooner than later.

I digress ... (I just last week bought 1500 shares in Ellies, who besides their electronic, electrical side, are big into generator supplies and for anyone interested in the stock market, those shares are worth looking at as a short to medium term buy. They're quite low now.)

Anyway, I also think that once Eskom get their act together (or at least reasonably so), the demand will have been substantially reduced with all the private alternate energy installations. The demand from paying consumers will have dropped off and therefore so will their revenue, whereas the "subsidised" consumers will still be there 'en mass', probably evern dramatically increased. If I'm right, who then will be paying for their upgrades and maintenance, not to even speak of running costs? They will have to raise the revenue somewhere. Are they going to hike the energy rates even further? More govt. levies on LPG gas? Raise general taxation? I was going to say that they cannot tax us for sunlight, but it wouldn't surprise me if they tried, or place levies on solar power equipment.

I for one have been looking at the solar panel option over the last few months with more than mild interest. That has now escalated to intense interest.

[Mud Dog]

Here we go .......

Running on empty - diesel was the last straw
(Antoinette Slabbert)

Eskom CEO Tshediso Matona apologised to the nation on Monday after four days of rolling power cuts disrupted Christmas shopping, costing the retail sector dearly and inconveniencing clients all over the country.

Matona disclosed that a delay in ordering diesel was the last straw that pushed the country unexpectedly into load shedding on Thursday.

Eskom’s two open-cycle gas turbines (OCGTs) are currently being used for up to 17 hours per day, which is way beyond what they were designed to do. Ankerlig power station uses 425 000 l/h and Gourikwa 236 000l/h. In November alone Eskom burnt about 140 million litres of diesel, Matona said.

He said diesel is a huge factor determining Eskom’s financial health and the financial director keeps a close eye on the cost. A delay in getting the green light from finance delayed the placement of the diesel order. These “internal processes need to be better aligned,” he said.

This was the main contributing factor for load shedding on Thursday, Matona said. It came against the background of unacceptably high breakages in the power stations and depleted water resources at the pump storage stations.

The situation continued on Friday and deepened when the OCGTs ran completely dry and a further 1 000 MW generation capacity was lost when three coal powered units tripped and a unit at the embattled Majuba power station went off-line due to coal supply problems.

These issues carried over into the weekend and on Monday a power cable to the mobile coal feeder system was cut accidentally at Majuba, as the remains of the coal silo that collapsed on November 1 were being demolished.

Matona expected most of the short-term problems to be sorted out by Monday night, adding 1 700MW to the system. He said load shedding is probable on Thursday and Friday and a medium risk will remain until December 15. It will reduce thereafter until mid-January, he said.

A total of 6 037 MW is expected to return to service by the end of the month, promising a stable January, but the risk will increase for February and March.

Eskom’s current projections show 17 days in February and 16 in March with a high probability of load shedding, as money for diesel runs out.

Matona said Eskom’s diesel budget is fast running out. The rate of diesel consumption has increased disproportionately and if it continues Eskom may need more money, which would be recovered through increased tariffs.

He said at current projections the diesel cost for the financial year will be equal to the R10 billion spent in the previous financial year.

Eskom executive for sustainability Dr Steve Lennon said Eskom will look for savings on other budget items that can be reallocated to the diesel budget, but if need be, the utility will ration diesel. He said Eskom had until the end of January to find a solution.

Matona denied over and over that there is a crisis at Eskom, but acknowledged there are “challenges galore”. He said the leadership of the organisation has been stabilised and there is a plan for each challenge. “It won’t deliver results overnight and we are engaging government.

“There are solutions. We may not have all the tools we need, but we are thinking it through,” he said.

He added that if there is a total blackout, one would be able to say there is a crisis at Eskom, but as long as load shedding is implemented when the national control centre deems it necessary, that won’t happen.

Lennon advised customers to check load shedding schedules and prepare for stage 3.

Load shedding schedules for municipal schedules are available here. Click on your municipality to see days and times affected.

Direct Eskom customers can search for their suburbs here.

If the less invasive phase 1 or 2 is implemented, it will be a bonus. He said Johannesburg decided to implement less frequent but longer periods of load shedding of four hours. Ekurhuleni is shedding in three-hour slots and in the rest of the country it is mostly limited to two hours at a time.

He said suggestions have been made for longer periods and more regular load shedding in an effort to bring more certainty. Eskom is however only implementing load shedding when absolutely necessary and any decision to expand it beyond that will have to be taken outside of Eskom.

[ChrisF]

shortened version - "Wet van Transvaal"

[Mud Dog]

I wondered about this myself ......


Will insurers cover theft as a result of load shedding?
Hanna Barry

JOHANNESBURG – Publishing load shedding schedules, while efficient on the part of Eskom and helpful for consumers, is proving to be a boon for criminals and bane for insurance companies.

In the early hours of Monday morning, burglars helped themselves to 23 Apple Mac computers, worth R600 000, from a secure office complex in Bryanston after load shedding rendered an electric fence, electric locks and alarm system useless.

“Criminals are loving load shedding,” said Genesis CEO, Tim Lazarus, whose client suffered the loss.

In the knowledge that most security systems run on electricity and battery back-ups generally last only a few hours, criminals are planning their break-ins during power outages, Lazarus explained.

Power surges, meanwhile, which may occur when the power returns after an extended outage and send a dramatically increased flow of current to a wall outlet or electrical box, are frying appliances countrywide.

Lazarus said Genesis was getting five or six power surge claims a day.

Specialist high net worth insurance company, MUA Insurance Acceptances said that a power surge in the home of one of its clients blew up his electricity board and started a fire causing massive damage to his home.

MUA’s managing director, Christelle Fourie said the property was insured for “quite a few million”. The claim was still being assessed, but she estimated it could be in the region of R2 million.

Since the rolling blackouts of 2008, Fourie noted that a number of insurance policies now had restricted or no cover for power surges. “A number do still cover it, but for how long will we be able to continue?”, she asked, having recently paid a R750 000 claim for damage to audio visual equipment as a result of a load shedding-induced power surge.

Power surges were often covered under ‘Accidental Damage’ in an insurance policy, but within relatively low limits (around R10 000 to R30 000). “We’ve had a R250 000 claim where a client’s home theatre system was fried to nothing,” Lazarus said. On commercial insurance policies, the ‘All Risks’ section of the policy would provide some cover, but not for office equipment, he said.

Theft as a result of faulty alarms

Fourie pointed out that loss from power surges and theft as a result of load shedding were not risks that insurance companies had priced for. She said insurance for these events would either become very expensive or they would simply become uninsurable since the exposures were too big.

When it came to load shedding-related theft claims MUA would consider each claim on its own merits, Fourie said. “If we find that the policyholder had a habit of setting the alarm and the alarm was off because of load shedding, we will pay the claim.”

Lazarus and Fourie pointed out that almost all insurance policies included a clause to the effect that when premises were unoccupied the alarm must be operative and functional. Lazarus said three of six insurance MDs he spoke to say theft as a result of a dud alarm system caused by load shedding is not technically covered and they “cannot be blamed for Eskom’s shortcomings”.

Hollard, however, said it would pay personal and commercial lines claims if alarm systems were armed and operative before load shedding and load shedding caused the failure. “We would consider not paying a claim if the alarm failure was due to neglect,” said Warwick Bloom, head of group marketing at Hollard.

Similarly, Outsurance said it would pay claims. “As always, we are not “technical” in deciding on whether to settle a claim or not. In an instance where the client had no control over the circumstances, we will settle. That is after all why you have insurance,” said Willem Roos, Outsurance CEO.

Santam and Mutual & Federal had not responded before publishing. Neither had the Ombudsman for Short-term Insurance (OSTI) given guidance as to how they would approach these claims.

For the majority of consumers who cannot afford generators, Fourie advised that burglar bars be considered and proper power surge protection installed in homes. “It’s better to try and prevent losses than think insurance companies will pay,” she said.

Moneyweb is awaiting responses from Eskom as to whether it will accept any liability from insurers or policyholders as a result of load shedding-related theft and power surge claims.

[Mud Dog]

SA, get ready for daily load shedding – Eskom

Antoinette Slabbert

South Africans must be prepared for daily load shedding from next week until at least the end of April. Eskom will do its best to prevent load shedding, but unless it gets R3 billion extra to buy diesel, daily load shedding is a certainty.



That was the message of Eskom CEO Tshediso Matona on Thursday during Eskom's quarterly State of the System briefing at its Megawatt Park head office in Sunninghill. Matona admitted that Eskom's policy to "Keep the Lights on" meant that power station maintenance was neglected. The 2010 FIFA World Cup and elections are some of the factors that informed the policy to prioritise keeping the lights on over plant maintenance, he said.

Chairperson Zola Tsotsi said the Eskom board had already decided on April 2, 2013 that the policy was not sustainable. He said that was a difficult decision, because it was contrary to government policy. He did not say why - if it was decided almost two years ago - the policy to prioritise maintenance is only being implemented now.

Matona added that Eskom has reached a point where power station units "are switching themselves off" because they were not switched off for maintenance earlier.


Eskom is currently discussing its budget - for diesel and plant maintenance with government - and the R3 billion shortfall on the diesel budget "has not been disapproved" Matona said. The adequacy of the R20 billion aid package government earlier promised Eskom is also under discussion, Matona said. He however emphasised that the fundamental problem is that electricity tariffs do not cover the cost.

Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa visited the utility on Thursday morning but left before the media briefing started. Matona further admitted that Eskom's maintenance is not up to standard and units often break down shortly after coming back from a major service. He said Eskom will focus on improving that.


During the briefing it became clear that the first unit of Kusile is only expected to come into operation early in 2017 - a year later than previously communicated. This was ascribed to "lessons learnt at Medupi" where expectations were over-optimistic. The date for synchronisation of Medupi unit 6 also seems to be an ever moving target. While the earlier deadline of December 24, 2014 has been missed, hopes that it will still happen this month are now fading. Roman Crookes, Eskom manager at Medupi, said it will happen "within weeks" and four to five months thereafter the unit will be supplying full power to the grid. Only when substantial new generation capacity becomes available will the pressure on the power system be relieved and the need for load shedding decrease.

[Mr_B]

The question still remains... solar or generator?

I spent alot of time researching and understanding the whole concept of solar PV panels with battery bank storage. If you can spend around R15-20K a solar solution will work great to get you through the loadshedding periods(2.5hours) powering a few "critical" devices around the house. I calculated I would need 500w/h to cover critical items... when I say critical I'm excluding the fridge and chest freezer but include TV and DSTV decoder(critical to swambo... haha). Fridge and freezer would have added another 600w to the equation and over a 2.5 hour outage I don't think it's too critical to keep them running. But then... what happens if Eskom has a major outage... 1 or 2 day... worst case scenario 2 weeks! The solar/battery system just won't cut it! So what are the cost effective alternatives if longer term backup is required... only a generator will do it cost effectively! Phoned around yesterday and you can by a decent Honda 5.5kva generator(EG) for R 13000... try and provide 5.5kva for say 16 hours a day from a solar system... way too expensive!

The issue I have is that covering yourself for loadshedding is possible via solar... but it won't work for longer outages! You gotta keep the beer cold!

Any input??

[WayneSchalk]

I have a 4000w puresignwave inverter, and 3 x 100ahr batteries. Looks like I will have to get that installed very fast

[Agteros]

I have ordered a Mecer 2400VA (1400Watt) UPSystem 24V for R7650. Apparently this is sufficient to power my 2 computers and router for a couple of hours. Hopefully to get me through each load-shedding session. And I am going to claim back the VAT on that and write it off against my income. Bastids.

[ChrisF]

I have ordered a Mecer 2400VA (1400Watt) UPSystem 24V for R7650. Apparently this is sufficient to power my 2 computers and router for a couple of hours. Hopefully to get me through each load-shedding session. And I am going to claim back the VAT on that and write it off against my income. Bastids.

DO check the re-charge time !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


UPS's are NOT made for daily power supply .....

[Mud Dog]

The question still remains... solar or generator?

.....................

Any input??

Something that you might be overlooking Bretton - a genny costs you from the outset and continues to do so in fuel and maintenance, whereas the solar starts paying you back from the moment of installation (I use mine daily whether or not there's an outage). Then how are you going to use your genny, extension cable or by-pass switch? The bypass installation is gonna cost you extra, and if you go with the extension cables, there a hassle, untidy and then there's the safety factor with all the loose cables. Your normal 10A domestic extension cable is going to be inadequate if you're going to include the running of some appliances. Gennies are also noisy things, not lekker, and you still got to physically go and start / switch it off (unless you really cough up for a bigger unit with electric start and auto switchgear. With my solar I have all the basics at a flick of a switch.

I do agree that you need a substantial installation to run your household appliances, even if it's just the fridges and freezers, but as you say, that only comes into play once there are extended outages. For this purpose I have a 2.7 KVA genny with a manual bypass that runs just the fridges and freezers, the rest I can manage with gas for cooking and solar for lights, TV, computer and ADSL router. So call it a hybrid system if you like, but it will suffice until I build up my solar to the point where it can cover all my needs.

[Mud Dog]

The view below is from an Eskom engineer .

Wonderful how the engineers of destruction(government) are keeping their heads below the parapet.

Nice to hear of the judicial inquiry, but please go for the government and not the Eskom engineers.

Eskom (when it was the Electricity Supply Commission) was one of the best companies in the world. It was owned by all South Africans, and was a non-profit making organization. Money was always set aside, by selling electricity for more than it cost to produce, for replacement and expansion.

THEN (1) it was turned into a business with the government as sole shareholder. This was done to collect further tax from those who actually pay for electricity, and to provide a vehicle for the implementation of government policies. Profits, and the money set aside for replacement and expansion was paid to the government as dividends.

Then (2) the sole 'shareholder' directly appointed most of the executive, and non-executive directors - called appointments !!!!

Then (3), people started getting appointed & promoted based on potential. They couldn't actually perform the work, so the people who could, stayed around as contractors. Although no additional work was getting done, the workforce increased by 23%, but this was also fine because the government wanted to reduce unemployment.

Then (4), in an attempt to reduce unemployment, by boosting exports (by making them cheaper) Eskom was instructed to produce the cheapest electricity in the world. This didn't work - instead of expanding and creating jobs, business just made bigger profits. All investment was stopped due to this.

Then (5) the sole shareholder in the Mbeki era, wouldn't allow Eskom to build any further power stations, saying that this would be done by private investors. The private investors didn't come to the party because electricity was too cheap to provide adequate return on investment.

5 years too late Eskom was allowed to expand and build 2 huge, new power stations, but it didn't have any money - this had to be borrowed.

Then (6) the ANC (in control of the sole shareholder) wanted a piece of the cake and 'got' a big piece of Hitachi - the company who 'won' the contract to supply the boilers for these power stations. Because of this Eskom wasn't allowed to take Hitachi to court when $h*t was supplied. Then Eskom, with it's reduced standards, attempted to project manage the construction of these new power stations by itself.
What a calamity !!!!!
The money was borrowed from the world bank, however because they are coal stations, a requirement was the installation of flue gas desulpherisation. This hasn't happened (yet) because of insufficient water. So Eskom is in the $h*t with the world bank.

So, because of taxation, affirmative action, transformation, employment equity, BBBEE, lots and lots of corruption, a bloated and bureaucratic workforce etc. Eskom has run out of money and generation capacity, standards have dropped dramatically, corporate memory is being lost at an alarming rate ...............................

Today Eskom is attempting to borrow the money for the steam generator replacement at Koeberg from a French bank. One of the questions that this bank is asking is about post Fukushima safety improvement progress. Guess what !!!!! Because there is no money ...........

As is always the case, SOMEONE must pay. So Eskom wanted to dramatically increase its price. The government (who is also the sole shareholder) wouldn't allow an increase large enough to cover the cost of its mismanagement. So Eskom is bankrupt, and its shares and bonds have been becoming "junk status".

The 'old' engineers are still doing their best.

and I would like to know where the 9 Billion Rand profit in the last finacial year disappeared to?

[Mud Dog]

Eskom grudgingly withdraws from World Economic Forum

Antoinette Slabbert

Eskom announced in a statement late on Monday that is has withdrawn its participation at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

This follows public criticism of plans to send an Eskom delegation to Davos while the power utility is reducing staff numbers as part of an intense savings drive, and the country is facing regular load shedding as Eskom is running out of money for diesel to generate emergency power.

The Davos meeting that brings together leaders from all over the world is due to start on Wednesday and ends on Saturday.

Eskom emphasised that the attendance of chief executive Tshediso Matona had been cancelled earlier on January 9, prior to the issue being aired publicly. “At the time, only the chairman Mr. Zola Tsotsi and the group executive for sustainability, Dr. Steve Lennon, were confirmed to go”, Eskom said.

Lennon earlier resigned and will be leaving Eskom at the end of March.

Eskom says it has “taken note of the public concern and have withdrawn our participation accordingly. Mr Tsotsi and Dr. Lennon will therefore not be attending the meeting in Davos.”

The utility then continues to defend at length its initial decision to send the reprentatives to Davos: “Eskom is a global business and its long-term sustainability is as important as the immediate term issues it is facing. Eskom leaders have to take care of both immediate and long-term aspects of the business. Engaging with global leaders, energy experts, investors, funders, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and maintaining an international profile is part of ensuring this long-term sustainability. It is for this reason that Eskom has a long-standing relationship with the WEF. The WEF’s assistance in forging partnerships in areas as diverse as climate change, anti-corruption , universal energy access, innovation and funding has been invaluable. This has been particularly relevant in recent years when Eskom faced major financial challenges, and Davos has provided an excellent platform for presenting a balanced view to future investors in Eskom and South Africa.”

Eskom said both Tsotsi and Lennon have international profiles and are regarded as international experts in their fields “and their engagment in international fora does not minimize the importance of the current challenges that Eskom is confronted with. If anything, the knowledge they return with has proven very useful in informing alternative approaches to problem-solving which is of benefit to Eskom.

“After all, Mr. Matona and the rest of the executive team were not going to attend the Davos meeting and as such are on the ground on a daily basis dealing with Eskom’s current situation.

“Eskom reviews its participation at the World Economic Forum and other relevant global events on an annual basis and makes a determination based on business priorities, and the need to remain relevant and up to date in both the national and international context.”

National Union of Metalworkers (Numsa) sector coordinator for basic metal and energy Stephen Nhlapo says Numsa has been raising Eskom’s wastefulness over a long period. Organising trips to Davos is just another example, he says.

Nhlapo referred to Eskom’s plans last year to upgrade its Megawatt Park head office to the value of R500 million. This project was cancelled after a public outcry following articles by Moneyweb and later Sunday Times.

He said Eskom gave former CEO Brian Dames a golden handshake, in spite of the fact that the Medupi project was derailed under his leadership.

“For Eskom R1 million is nothing, but if you add all those bits up, it can make a difference to the diesel budget”, he said.

Nhlapo said Numsa is also concerned about Eskom’s reduction of staff numbers through voluntary severance packages. “They will pay the packages and end up hiring the same people as consultants, as they have often done in the past. In Eskom there is a consultant for every tow employees.”

[Mud Dog]

Namibia exporting power to Eskom

Sapa

Namibian power utility NamPower is currently exporting electricity to its South African counterpart Eskom, which is struggling to meet demand, an official said Monday.

"We are currently exporting up to 200MW of electricity to South Africa," Werner Graupe, senior manager for energy trading at NamPower, told a Sapa correspondent on Monday.

"The electricity comes from our Ruacana hydropower plant on the Kunene River bordering Angola. Due to the good rains experienced in the area, particularly southern Angola, the Kunene River flows strongly, sometimes at 300 cubic metres per second, driving the turbines at the power plant, and we can export up to 200MW off-peak," Graupe said.

Namibia usually imports roughly 60% of its power from neighbouring countries, including Eskom.
During good rainy seasons in the catchment areas of the Kunene River, mainly in Angola, where the river has its source, Namibia can export electricity outside peak times, which is late at night.

Eskom is struggling to cope with South Africa's electricity demand due to ailing infrastructure and maintenance backlogs.

[Mud Dog]

Power ships the answer

Antoinette Slabbert

powership.jpg (51.59 KiB) Viewed 3986 times

The reality of several years of load shedding is dawning on South Africans as the completion dates of Eskom’s Medupi, Kusile and Ingula power stations are inexorably moved outwards.

Even the development of coal-fired power stations by independent power producers will take three to four years, once the Department of Energy (DoE) completes its current procurement process. It is planning to procure 600MW of generation capacity in this way.

In the interim the country’s exposure to regular load shedding could be mitigated by floating power stations moored in cities like Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth and Durban.

Moneyweb reader Simon Norton, a Cape Town corrosion consultant, brought this possibility to Moneyweb’s attention. The energy specialists we subsequently tested it with confirm that it is a real possibility.

Turkish Karadeniz Energy Group is one of several companies globally that rent powerships to countries experiencing temporary power constraints.

According to the company's website, Karadeniz powerships “are high technology floating power plants designed and constructed to fulfill the urgent electricity needs of the countries through rental contracts of power purchase agreements (PPA)”.

A PPA is an agreement of guaranteed electricty off-take at an agreed upon tariff. The development of renewable energy projects under the DoE’s bid program is also subject to PPAs.

Karadeniz says on its website the powerships are delivered to client countries as a complete power plant ready to operate immediately. The capacity of individual ships range from 45MW to 500MW.

They operate on either liquid fuel or natural gas or a combination of the two and can provide uninterrupted electricity at various high voltage levels.

Eskom spokesperson Andrew Etzinger says the utility rented a barge-mounted turbine in 2006 when power generation at the Koeberg nuclear power plant in the Western Cape was reduced due to the incident with an errant bolt. The barge was rented for a few months to supplement power supply to the Western Cape.

Etzinger says a powership with a generation capacity of 310MW, like that of Karadeniz, should be capable of powering a town like East London. The idea is however not to make a town self-sufficient, but rather to feed the electricty into the national grid.

He says while floating generation can alleviate the supply problem, the cost may be comparable to the cost of running Eskom’s diesel plants, which means it only solves one part of the problem.

Power expert and director of the South African National Energy Association (Sanea) Brian Day says powerships are an appropriate solution for South Africa’s current power crisis.

He says a powership with a generation capacity of 310MW is equal to one unit of a typical two unit 600MW power station, such as that which the department of energy is currently procuring from independent power producers.

Two such ships could generate the same electricity as the planned coal IPP, but would be operational sooner.

Karadinez operates and maintains its own plant and typically enters into agreements for two to five years.

Another power expert who did not want to be named because of his association with an independent power producer, says his company investigated the use of powerships about 18 months ago. At that stage Eskom was in better shape, but the crisis has deepened and this is definitely a solution that should be seriously considered, he says.

While Karadinez promises its powerships can be ready within 60-180 days, this expert estimates a lead time of a year to 18 months.

He says one needs an on-shore substation to feed the power into. If that substation has to be constructed it will require time consuming environmental approvals. These and any similar requirements for the powership will have to be expedited.

He believes powerships can deliver power at R2.00 to R2.50/kWh which is considerably less costly than Eskom’s open-cycle gas turbines that run at a cost of up to R3.00 to R4.50, depending on the diesel price.

The expert told Moneyweb that his company will submit a proposal to the DoE to procure floating power stations. If the principle is accepted, the department will issue a request for proposals and proceed with the procurement process.

The department has issued a request for information about possible near-term solutions to reduce or shift electricty demand or improve supply and submission.

[ChrisF]

He believes powerships can deliver power at R2.00 to R2.50/kWh which is considerably less costly than Eskom’s open-cycle gas turbines that run at a cost of up to R3.00 to R4.50, depending on the diesel price.

add municipal distribution costs and we are looking at between R3-50 to R4-50 for the end user ....


as I said previously - our electricity costs WILL more than double in the next 18 months !!!!

[Mud Dog]

Eskom may pay you for running your generator
(Antoinette Slabbert)

Eskom is engaging large property owners in an effort to contract their stand-by generator capacity to reduce the electricty demand on the national grid.

It is prepared to pay the owner of the generator R3/kWh to run the generator when called upon.

Head of Eskom’s demand side management Andrew Etzinger says the utility is engaging property owners through the South African Property Association (Sapoa), but the offer will not be limited to members only. Any generator above the minimum capacity of 1MW will be considered.

“We come out and install a meter on your generator and will thereafter compensate you at about R3/kWh when you run it. We may require you to run it for longer periods that you would have for your own needs though,” says Etzinger.

He explains that while the load shedding schedule may dictate that a shopping centre, for example, must run its generator for two hours, Eskom may require something different. For instance it may need the centre to run on its generators for six hours, because it will reduce demand on the rest of the grid for that period.

CEO of Sapoa Neil Gopal says the concept was well received by Sapoa members present at the initial meeting with Eskom representatives in December last year.

Etzinger said any generator has to be switched on regularly to ensure it is always in working condition. The benefit will be that owners will now be compensated for it. He advises though that “the tariff may not be that attractive and owners may be concerned about running out of diesel when they really need it for their own demand”.

These are things to be considered and some flexibility may be necessary, he said. Etzinger nevertheless hopes that agreements can be reached during February.

He said Sapoa has sent a questionnaire to its members and is waiting for feedback.

Gopal said Sapoa still has to hear from its members what their major concerns are and whether they consider the tariff that Eskom offers viable.

He said as the offer stands the key benefits to Sapoa members include:

Capacity payment for hours scheduled to be on standby the following day;
Energy payment of R1.25/kWh for energy not consumed;
Standby notification by 15:00 for the day ahead;
Minimum 30 minute notification to reduce load;
One to two hour reduction request per sheduled day;
Up to 150 load reduction events per year.

[Mud Dog]

Blackout puts us in the red
(Pieter Swart)

Eskom spent R10.6 billion on diesel in the 2013/14 year to avoid a critical shortfall of electricity supply in South Africa. Extravagant as this figure may seem, it is not nearly as steep as the cost to the economy of an extended power failure.

The economic impact of power interruptions is measured through The Cost of Unserved Energy (COUE). With this figure, Eskom’s diesel spend could be justified, if not excused.

The concept of COUE

A report by Concept Economics, a New Zealand-based company, defines COUE as: “a measure [of] the willingness of electricity consumers to pay to avoid a supply interruption.”

COUE comprises direct costs, such as restart costs, loss of production, damage to equipment and spoilage and indirect costs – foregone sales or income as well as the loss of leisure time.

An all-encompassing weighted average is computed based on costs to industry, commerce and the individual.

A COUE of R75/kWh was calculated in the load shedding days of 2008 by the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) and is a conservative estimate in today’s prices. An inflation-adjusted 2015 estimate would be about R110/kWh.

Chris Yelland, MD of EE Publishers and an electrical engineer, gives an example of how Eskom itself has used the COUE when deciding whether to build a parallel power line. If the COUE to the economy of power cuts on an existing line is greater than the cost of building a new parallel line, it is deemed economically viable to build the parallel line.

Have vs have-not

The average selling price of electricity is 70-75c/kWh. Not having it costs R75/kWh – 100 times more. Although a product comprises other input costs besides electricity, it cannot be manufactured without the necessary power.

Through foregone revenue, Eskom loses out even more than we do. Dividing Eskom’s 2013/14 revenue by the total number of kWh supplied yields an average of 63c/kWh. Were it able to ensure ceaseless supply, the COUE tells us that consumers might be willing to pay far more.

Yet despite this lucrative opportunity to increase turnover by securing supply, South Africa still faces critical shortages. South African electricity has no realistic substitute.

Eskom disagrees. It has replaced electricity with cash on two occasions: it paid major industrial users to switch off completely in 2011 and again in 2013, thus alleviating consumption by “buying back” its power, to facilitate much-needed maintenance.

The converse of the definition of COUE is “the willingness of electricity consumers to accept compensation for a supply interruption”. The COUE is R75/kWh, yet Eskom paid only 87c/kWh for the 2013 buy-backs. The consumers involved ought to have thought twice about their price.

The nation-wide bill

Tshediso Matona, Eskom’s CEO, said in an interview with Moneyweb that 2008 load shedding cost the economy R57 billion. This figure was calculated using the aforementioned COUE.

Should a blackout be upon us, it could take up to two weeks to restart electricity supply, according to Eskom. Total annual electricity consumption of 222 000 gWh (per Eskom’s 2014 integrated report) translates to 8515 gWh for this restart period.

Using R75/kWh, a worst-case scenario blackout would cost us R640 billion – roughly 20% of South Africa’s pedestrian GDP, estimated at R3.6 trillion for 2014.

COUE also accounts for the impact of damages from power interruptions. If we assume that production merely halts and no additional damage is inflicted on equipment, a two week blackout would still cost R138 billion, or 3.8% of GDP.

If you factor in 2015 load shedding (which is likely to be frequent), you reach an astronomical figure.

Eskom’s R10.6 billion diesel bill is a mere fraction of this cost. If it is unable to pay for its extra diesel, a costly power crisis will be charged to everyone’s account.

Government help will further burden taxpayers, but the cost of no action at all could bring them to their knees.

Yes, we would be willing to pay in the region of R640 billion for the guarantee of avoiding the blackout, but the sad truth of COUE is that the hypothetical situation in which uninterrupted power is offered to the consumer will – in South Africa, at least – remain indefinitely hypothetical. Tariff hikes at most only maintain the supply of electricity and certainly do not upgrade its quality.

Diesel-guzzling is thus the only option until maintenance backlogs are cleared and things are back to the status quo of only infrequent panic.

[Mud Dog]

The cost of Eskom’s three power station headaches
(Antoinette Slabbert)

Eskom is quick to blame lower than applied for electricity tariffs for its financial woes and doesn’t hesitate to remind consumers of this fact. It’s urgently looking for R3 billion extra to augment its depeleted diesel budget, and warns of regular load shedding if it doesn’t get it.

The National energy regulator of South Africa (Nersa) is however mandated to only grant the revenue if an efficient operator needs to provide electricty for the country.

Nersa has long been of the opinion that Eskom can work more efficiently and has shaped the tariff increases it granted accordingly.

Instead of taking Nersa’s criticism on board, Eskom persists with its argument that there is a R225 billion revenue shortfall over the current tariff period and that the regulator must be “aligned” with Eskom’s realities.

Moneyweb looked at three recent Eskom events, their effect on Eskom’s generation capacity and financial state and what it says about Eskom’s efficiency.

Duvha Unit 3:

On March 30 last year the boiler at unit 3 of Eskom’s Duvha power station exploded, rendering the unit inoperable.

Eskom in December reported:

“Following damage to the conveyer belt between Middelburg mine and Duvha in December 2013 Duvha changed its coal source resulting in a different type, grade and quality of coal being fed into the boiler. When put into the boiler, this coal resulted in more and different residue. The build-up of residue in the boiler was being managed by the power station. However in conjunction with this there was a build-up of unburnt fuel and insufficient oxygen levels in the boiler. This factor, coupled with the condition of the boiler and operating practice resulted in the failure.”

Eskom did not expand on the problematic “operating practice”.

The boiler has to be rebuilt completely. Eskom says it will be funded by the insurance claim.

Commentators are however sceptical about the willingness of insurers to pay for a failure in operating procedure.

Eskom hopes to place contracts for the repairs by June this year and is not able to estimate the cost. It does say the reconstruction could take 36 to 48 months. That is three to four years!

Sources close to the process told Moneyweb it could cost at least R4.5 billion.

Majuba:

The collapse of the central coal silo at Majuba early in November last year has disrupted the power station’s entire coal feeder system.

While the findings of the investigation have not yet been made public, Eskom group executive for technology and commercial Matshela Koko disclosed to Moneyweb that the investigation is focusing on the design. The Majuba silos, unlike all the other Eskom coal silos, were not lined. This, it is suspected, led to increased corrosion and the subsequent collapse.

He said indications are that the silo was built correctly and according to the design.

Koko could not say why it was not lined, but if that is the issue, one would like to know why Eskom signed off on the design.

The investigation should be completed by March and reconstruction is scheduled to begin in April. The target date for completion is March 2018 - another four years.

The cost of interim measures to mitigate the loss of the feeder system and implementing a permanent solution is estimated at R1.3 billion. This does not include the cost of mitigating the real risk posed by fine wet coal that, in the absence of the automatic feeder system, is being trucked in.

Eskom says available funds have been “reprioritized” for Majuba. “In addition, an insurance claim has been lodged for this incident and we anticipate that most of the funds will be recovered.”

That remains to be seen.

Lethabo:

Also in November a lightning strike set in motion events that saw Eskom’s Lethabo power station drown in ash.

Serious questions have been asked about Eskom’s response to the lightning strike and why ash build-up was allowed to reach such levels. Eskom spokesperson Andrew Etzinger explained that as a result of the Majuba collapse, Lethabo was run very hard. A lack of maintenance and ash clearance backlog set the scene for serious problems. The lighting strike was only the last straw…

The ash has since been cleared, with the exception of the emergency off-loading area which is expected to be cleared by the end of March. This, Eskom says, does not impact on operations.

The cleaning cost amounted to R9 million and the cost to repair the precipitator fields that were damaged as a result of the ash build-up inside the precipitators is estimated at R20 million.

Eskom says some of the work will be executed during the station’s planned outage and are provided for in the outage budgets. “The additional amount required will be funded from the operations budget of the station.”

It should be completed by the end of March.

These three incidents have cost Eskom dearly in money and in power output. At the time of the incidents both the Majuba and Lethabo power stations were completely out of service for a few days. Lethabo is now back at full capacity, but Majuba will be running at half of its capacity until the feeder systym has been rebuilt.

Eskom CEO Tshediso Matona in December linked the unavailability of Duvha unit 3 and restricted capacity at Majuba directly to load shedding. Etzinger also says that load shedding would be unlikely in the absence of those two incidents.

If the diesel budget might have lasted, Eskom would have maintained electricity sales and as a result its revenues would be looking better.

It is no wonder Nersa didn’t allow Eskom the full additional diesel cost it applied for in its recent interim price adjustment relating to 2012/13. Nersa argued with Eskom that less costly coal-fired stations should have been available. Therefore it only compensated it for the extra power generation necessary to keep the lights on at the cost Eskom would have incurred if its coal-fired stations were not on unplanned outages. Eskom is now admitting that it was a mistake to neglect maintenance and its own policy to keep the lights on at all costs led to the increase in unplanned maintenance.

It is a pity that Nersa is timid in its communication. It is hardly being heard in the public domain, while Eskom gets its message across efficiently.

While the cost of load shedding to the economy is huge, government’s war room will be well advised to ask Nersa to speak up a bit, lest it pays up and reinforces an inefficient operator.

[Mr_B]

Eskom starts load shedding - January 26, 2015

Eskom has begun implementing load shedding across South Africa because of ‘unforeseen technical problems’...

Eskom says it has been forced into a fresh round of load shedding following ‘unforeseen technical problems’ at its power stations.

“The power system is severely constrained. Eskom will load shed from 11:00,” the power utility said in a statement on 26 January 2015.

Eskom last implemented stage one load shedding on 9 January, due to high electricity demand and the unavailability of some of its generating units.

Eskom CEO Tshediso Matona recently said that the country’s power supply would remain severely constrained in the coming months while Eskom dealt with its maintenance backlog.

At a meeting held on 13 January, Matona addressed business on the growing power crisis in the country.

Matona told stakeholders that one unexpected event at any of its power stations could push the country to the total failure of the national electricity system that may take weeks to resolve.

However, Eskom spokesman, Andrew Etzinger, told the Sunday Times that this is not what the CEO meant, saying that Matona’s comments were “misinterpreted” due to his incorrect use of grammar.

Despite this backtracking, Eskom engineers say that a total loss of control of the grid is a possibility – albeit an unlikely one – and there are measures in place for such an eventuality.

http://mybroadband.co.za/news/energy/11 ... dding.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Ag f*#&$$#... Chris... how far is that container?

[ChrisF]

Ag f*#&$$#... Chris... how far is that container?

hehehehe ....

THIS is exactly why the supplier swore me to secrecy - the delivery date is sadly NOT in his control ....


order was placed a few weeks back, nou kan ons maar net WAG ...

[Mud Dog]

Expect extensive load shedding until Friday
(Antoinette Slabbert)

Eskom executives were reportedly in emergency meetings on Monday as almost a third of its generation fleet was unavailable and load shedding was escalated to stage 2.

According to a system status bulletin issued late on Monday electricty demand was expected to outstrip supply on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

If Eskom’s projections prove to be accurate, the country will be subjected to load shedding on each of these days. Only when the demand drops over the weekend, will Eskom be able to cope with providing electricity to all users.

The utility’s unplanned outages increased to a shocking 10 515 MW on Monday. 3 429MW of generation capacity was taken out of service for planned maintenance. That means that a staggering total of 13 944MW, almost a third of Eskom’s generation capacity, was out of service on Monday.

In a statement announcing load shedding on Monday morning Eskom merely referred to “unexpected technical problems” that placed the power system under severe pressure, necessitating load shedding.

In its latest System Adequacy Outlook issued on January 14, energy regulator Nersa stated that electricity demand in South Africa was 4.78% lower in 2014 than in 2007. Electricity supply by Eskom decreased by 4.82% compared to 2007.

Nersa caluclated that Eskom should have had a reserve margin of 31.72% for 2014, taking into account power imports, renewable energy and other power purchases. In 2008 the corresponding margin was only 10.63%. Even if only Eskom’s own generation capacity was taken into account, it should have had a reserve margin of 26.69% in 2014, according to Nersa.

Nersa stated that Eskom’s outlook for 2015 is a capacity margin of 24.67%.

[Mud Dog]

Sort of related to Eskom's woes ...........


Tshwane electricity theft spirals out of control
(Antoinette Slabbert)

Electricity theft, meter tampering and faulty meters cost the City of Tshwane R416 million in the 2013/14 financial year. This is an 83% increase over the previous year.

Together with technical losses, the municipality lost income from electricity to the value of R819 million, up from R622 million in the previous financial year.

In total 14.25% of all electricity available for sale was lost. This is a sharp increase from 11.03% in the previous financial year and comes as the country is subjected to load shedding because of a supply shortage.

The norm for electricity losses in big cities is 6%-8%, Leon Claassen, analyst at Ratings Afrika earlier told Moneyweb.

The extent of the electricity losses was disclosed in the Auditor-General’s (AG) audit report that will be tabled in council on Thursday.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) on Wednesday hosted a media conference about the AG report and other issues from the annual financial statements the report is based on.

The city got an unqualified report with emphasis on several matters.

One of the matters the AG emphasised is the R5 billion impairment of consumer debtors, an increase of almost R1.3 billion from the previous financial year and 66% of all consumer debtors (2013:54%).

The city also made a provision for doubtful debt of R1.1 billion, up from R810 million in the previous financial year.

As in previous years the AG said Tshwane’s financial statements contained several material misstatements, this time including non-current assets, revenue and irregular expenditure. These were corrected during the audit process resulting in the unqualified audit opinion.

The AG stated that city manager Jason Ngobeni as accounting officer contravened supply chain management regulations by approving procurement of goods and services of more than R200 000 without inviting competing bids.

He did not put a value to such transactions, but added that construction contracts were given to contractors who did not qualify in terms of the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) regulations.

The CIDB grades contractors in terms of financial and technical ability, which implies that the contractors appointed might not have been able to complete the job properly.

The AG also stated that contracts were unlawfully given to government employees, council employees and their family members and where applicable, the relationship was not disclosed.

While he does not disclose the amounts involved in each instance, irregular expenditure, which is in contravention of legislative requirements, amounted to R451 million. This is a cumulative number, which had an opening balance of R295 million at the beginning of the year, of irregular expenditure in previous years that has not been addressed.

Unauthorised expenditure, which refers to spending that was not budgeted for and is a number accumulated only in the reporting period, amounted to R1.2 billion – double the R600 million of the previous financial year.

The AG pointed out that internal controls were not effective to ensure that an adequate asset register was maintained and the municipality did not pay its creditors within the required 30 days.

In the financial statements the Group CFO admitted that creditors are on average paid after 51 days. The DA however argues that if the payment before invoice of the city’s controversial electricity contractor PEU is excluded, the payments are on average only being made after 104 days – three and a half months!

The AG criticised the lack of effective oversight over financial reporting and the implementation of plans to address previous audit findings.

The DA said the city is facing serious risks. “The city is operating on or beyond healthy financial ratio’s, with a dicey asset register, decreasing cash flow, non-collection of debtors and insufficient cash to meet its liabilities to name but a few,” the party said.

According to the party, the city’s current ration (current assets in relations to current liabilities) is 0.72:1.

That means the city only has 72c in assets to pay every R1 of short term liabilities. It will therefore have to dip into long term assets to cover its current liabilities.

The DA explains why the city embarked on a hurried sale of several of its properties last year – it needed cash.

If inventories are excluded from current assets the ration deteriorates to 0.66:1.

The party said the City of Tshwane’s cash decreased by 19% over the year, while current liabilities decreased by only 2.6%, illustrating the worsening cash shortage.

According to the DA, Tshwane “will simply run out of operating cash during the present financial year” as it fails to collect debtors.

[ChrisF]

Andy bear with me for a moment ....

I think 99% of us agree on (against) e-tolls. So the vast majority used it and refused to pay .... to date NO real action against those that dont pay - as the numbers are too many.



now back to power metering ...


there have always been a small percentage of jippoed meters. This percentage has been steadily increasing .... WHAT is being done to these people ? In the LONG term it catches up to the home owner, but in the SHORT term more and more people are doing this.


Add to this the economic realities ... many struggle to make ends meet (often NOT those with illegal meters)

Now we DO know that the cost of power has to go up 2 to 3 fold. Any guesses how many more illegal connections there will be ?

and if there are "too many to prosecute" ....



sadly the tax payer is in for another beating .....


DO hope I am wrong !!

[4x4BEES]

[Mud Dog]

Lifting the lid further on a power system in crisis
(Hilton Tarrant)

As the power system teetered on the brink of collapse in January, Eskom chief executive Tshediso Matona stated the obvious: “We have arrived at a point that does not allow us to ignore the health of our plants”.

He told us how the utility would do more maintenance than ever before, with the not-so-thinly-veiled implication that previous chief executive Brian Dames and his executive team sat around playing solitaire and did the absolute bare minimum maintenance in the nearly four-year period Dames was in charge.

Said Matona: “If we did not decide to keep the lights on during the World Cup, South Africa would not have been where it is today.”

The problem, of course, is that the World Cup was a two-month period right at the start of Dames’s tenure. I don’t know Dames, nor have I spoken to him since the announcement of his resignation in December 2013, but those decisions to run the plants long and hard over 2010 would’ve been made before he arrived (and likely in the corridors of Cabinet or The Presidency or Luthuli House).

In fact, during the winters of 2012 and 2013, Eskom did planned maintenance right up to the coldest months (June/July). The severity of the decision to “keep the lights on” during 2010 was clear two years later (not now!). By then, Eskom was running its planned maintenance at 12% (around 5 000 MW, on average) – a level we simply hadn’t seen before. And it is unlikely to be seen this year.

Hilton+1.jpg (29.54 KiB) Viewed 3866 times

In 2013, Dames told us in his deadpan fashion that “winter will be different to previous winters as Eskom will have to perform long duration planned maintenance during the coldest months”. At the time, he added that “Our power stations are ageing and are being run hard. Sustained high levels of planned maintenance are needed to ensure reliable performance.”

Dames is a convenient scapegoat, even though he wasn’t mentioned explicitly. So too, our President’s protestations that the current supply crisis is a result of apartheid/government being so successful at electrification/wet coal (pick one or more).

The interesting thing about Matona’s “colour” in January for the current state of Eskom’s generating fleet is that none of it was on any of the prepared slides. These were off-the-cuff (unchecked?) remarks.

At that briefing, the utility assured us that it would no longer defer or ignore maintenance. Mongezi Ntsokolo, Group Executive: Generation, put it plainly: “We are starting differently with maintenance as from today… We want to push as much maintenance before winter as possible, we have not decided exactly what we will do.”

So, a plan to do “as much as possible” without a plan. Sounds about right.

The truth is the long-term outage at Duvha (costing 600MW) and the impact of the “cracked” silo at Majuba (costing anywhere from 1 210MW-2 310MW) have severely impacted Eskom’s ability to do any maintenance at all, never mind the amount necessary.

Matona quantified the scale of the problem. The maintenance schedule… “is asking for 2 000MW of diesel capacity and an additional 3 000MW more capacity than we have”.

Put bluntly, Eskom needs to find 5 000MW of capacity just to do proper maintenance.

And it’s not going to be able to find it.

But we knew this already. It’s taken the media six weeks to start figuring out just how bad things are at Eskom, something I’d detailed on Moneyweb in early December. In theory, Eskom had a window over the holidays to do more maintenance than usual because of lower demand.

But, ironically, Eskom under Matona has done less planned maintenance over the peak December/January period than it did a year ago when Dames was still in charge, as data compiled by Moneyweb shows (on this chart, more is better).

Hilton+2.jpg (29.67 KiB) Viewed 3866 times

The system was so tight over Christmas, that Eskom could barely manage 6 000MW of planned maintenance (versus 8 000MW at the exact same time a year ago). We don’t know the exact figures for the two dates as Eskom did not publish system status information on December 25 or January 1 (something it did do in 2013/2014), but its impossible for Eskom to have suddenly burst to more than the 5 500MW level simply because of the quantum of unplanned outages. Most worryingly, it was able to run planned maintenance at between 6 000MW and 8 000MW in the second half of January last year, compared to under half of that this year.

The unplanned outages are at levels never ever seen before. Last Monday, a full quarter of Eskom’s generating capacity was offline because of unplanned reasons. And the trend is not good (on this chart, more is not better).

Hilton+3.jpg (32.51 KiB) Viewed 3866 times

Obviously, it is able to do maintenance in the unplanned outages, but it’s highly unlikely any of this is meaningful, given the urgent need to get the tripped/offline units back online as soon as possible.

Without this gap to do maintenance, there’s a decrease in performance, and – to quote Matona – the “increase in unplanned outages had a compounding negative effect on power system reliability”.

It’s a downward spiral with no end in sight.

Even if you take the ±2 000MW related to Duvha and Majuba out of the equation, the situation still looks worse than it did a year ago.

But Eskom can’t just magic away that 2 000MW headache it’s sitting with. That unit at Duvha will be offline for the next three to four years. The reconstruction of the silo at Majuba will also take at least three years.

That means the first unit at Medupi coming on stream is not the oasis in the desert it’s being made out to be. Those 800MW are not even enough to replace the shortfall from Majuba! And that’s presuming Eskom can get it producing anywhere near full capacity, which seems unlikely given the synchronisation “issues”. Best case: it’ll probably be enough to offset the 600MW shortfall from the exploded Duvha boiler.

So again, Eskom is adding capacity and not even able to stand still.

Little wonder Eskom senior management prays every day, if the City Press is to be believed (which it should be). Matona’s been AWOL for a large part of January… we’ve heard from Acting CEO Dan Marokane (whose day job is Group Executive: Group Capital) practically since that briefing. (That’s another story altogether.)

The simple truth is that another catastrophe like Duvha or Majuba will push us over the edge. I think nearly everyone at Eskom knows that.

How do we get out of this mess? Some thoughts, tomorrow…

[Mud Dog]

Medupi deadline slips again ....

As South Africans emerge from a weekend of load shedding news broke on Sunday that the deadline for synchronising the first much needed unit of Eskom’s Medupi power station has slipped again.

Energy expert and editor of EE Publishers Chris Yelland on Sunday tweeted:

Breaking news: #Eskom extends deadline for 1st synchronisation of Medupi Unit 6 by a further 6 weeks from mid Feb to end Mar 2015.
— Chris Yelland (@chrisyelland) February 8, 2015



Eskom spokesperson Khulu Phasiwe subsequently told Moneyweb that Eskom is saying the synchronisation will take place some time during the first quarter of this year; in other words by the end of March at the latest.

He said there are no new problems. “We just want to make sure everything is done correctly. We have worked on it for seven years, we don’t want to rush and mess it up now,” he said.

Medupi is already way behind schedule. Unit 6, the first to be synchronised, should have come on line by the end of 2013 and the others each at six-month intervals thereafter. This date was extended several times.

Last year the deadline for Unit 6 was eventually set for December 24 and Eskom started a much publicised count-down towards that date.

This however did not happen and Eskom then said it will be done “within weeks”. Eskom CEO Tshediso Matona justified the further delay by saying the company did not want to take short-cuts.

On January 6 the utility issued a statement that cast doubt on its latest Medupi practices.

The utility said after careful assessment it had decided to proceed towards synchronisation despite the fact that prescribed levels of cleanliness were not reached during the steam blow-through.

This blow-through is aimed at clearing construction debris from the pipework and boiler.

After a successful blow-through pipework should be reinstated to send steam to the turbine. If the debris has not been properly cleared, it would place the turbine at risk.

The decision by Eskom raised questions as to whether Eskom was placing the turbine guarantee at risk due to its non-compliance.

Phasiwe told Moneyweb on Sunday that Eskom is still trying to find common ground with turbine manufacturer Alstom on this issue.

The synchronisation was expected by January 15 and then by February 15. Late in January former acting spokesperson Andrew Etzinger said the synchronisation would be done by the end of February.

This deadline has now slipped to the end of March.

Each of Medupi’s six units will add 800MW of generation capacity to the grid. This will go some way to assisting Eskom in balancing supply and demand and avoiding load shedding.

From synchronisation it may however take at least six months before the unit will contribute at full capacity to the grid.

This comes as the deadline for the first unit of Kusile Power Station to be synchronised has slipped by a year until the end of 2016, with no clear explanation.

[Mr_B]

What they are not saying is that Medupi generator unit 6 was supposed to start delivering power to the grid before Koeberg took reactor 1 offline for scheduled maintenance from 9 Fed to some time in May. So now they have a 3 month period with a loss of 800-900mw for power in the grid.

Won't surprise me at all if we are permanently on stage 2 loadshedding, even stage 3a, for the next 3-4 months!

[ChrisF]

What they are not saying is that Medupi generator unit 6 was supposed to start delivering power to the grid before Koeberg took reactor 1 offline for scheduled maintenance from 9 Fed to some time in May. So now they have a 3 month period with a loss of 800-900mw for power in the grid.

Won't surprise me at all if we are permanently on stage 2 loadshedding, even stage 3a, for the next 3-4 months!

you are almost correct .... just slightly out with your time frame .....


try stage 2 for the next THREE YEARS !!



Even before Unit 1 was taken off line we were short MORE than the total of Unit 6 at Medupi !!

[Mr_B]

Even before Unit 1 was taken off line we were short MORE than the total of Unit 6 at Medupi !!

Shoot me for trying to remain optimistic!

[ChrisF]

Even before Unit 1 was taken off line we were short MORE than the total of Unit 6 at Medupi !!

Shoot me for trying to remain optimistic!

try to keep up ...

no mercy for eksdom !!



this weekend we experienced the following load shedding:

Friday at 13:00 - traffic lights out in Onrus, load shedding from Onrus to Hermanus. We had our meeting in the dark until at 14:30 the power came back on

Friday 16:00 - loadshedding (again) in Onrus. It did come back on at 18:00, but we switched off the lights and enjoyed the braai fire ... was a good few hours before the women figured out the power is back on.

Saturday morning 8:00 to 10:00 loadshedding in Onrus.

Sunday back at home we were just in time for the load shedding from 16:00 to 18:00 !

[ChrisF]

Saturday - loadshedding from 12:00 to 14:00 ...

Sunday night, sitting back, relaxing, enjoying the new series of TopGear and ---------




kyk nou is ek lekker gatvol vir die strooi .... !!!

[Mud Dog]

Jy met al die kuns asook die megafters / gadgets ?????

Ek het nie meer 'n saak met load shedding nie. Vandag was ons nie tuis toe hulle 'shed' nie, maar gister (Saterdag) was dit vanaf 16h00 tot 18h00 ... vrou het so 'n uur TV gekyk terwyl ek buite besig was. Daarna was daar nie meer sonskyn om die battery te herlaai nie, en sowaar teen 22h00 is die krag weer uit. Vrou was alreeds bed toe. Toe skakel ek my komper en goeters oor na inverter en sommer daar gelos vir die res van die aand (so om en by 2½ ure) alhoewel die krag net vir 'n uur af was. Naderhand uit nuskerigheid battery voltage gaan check .... was nog op 12.4V ..... nie te sleg nie.

[ChrisF]

Andy ek ry nie elke dag met Elders nie .... en dan is die battery nie elke keer vol vir die snert nie ....



swembad het n "hap" gevat uit my budget.

Vanoggend n briefie gestuur vir my boekhouer - tyd vir voorlopige belasting. MENS, maar ek is suur oor my bydrae tot die WWE-parliament show !!!!!!!!!!!


gaan n tydjie vat voor ek n standalone stelsel kan bekostig .... OF ek gaan GATVOL raak en die verband raid .... as die bank gisteraand oop was het ek dit gisteraand al gedoen !



kyk so op n week aand is dit n gemors, MAAR as mens nie op n Sondagaand kan ontspan nie ..... GRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrr !!

[Mud Dog]

Jy sal (na al jou ad's vir 4x4 Direct) 'n HP inkoopie by Pieter moet gaan maak!

[Mud Dog]

I have no doubt that we all realise why we're having this electrical energy crisis, but besides mismanagement and misappropriation of funds, a factor that has been delicately sidestepped for too long is the level of power theft and the effects it has and will still have if it isn't urgently curbed. This article gives some perspective and although refers to Johannesburg, the problem is country wide and I suspect even bigger in cities with large informal settlements.


Almost a fifth of Joburg’s electricity lost through theft, tampering
(Antoinette Slabbert)


As Joburg residents suffer load shedding, it’s come to light that a full 28.17% of the electricity Johannesburg’s City Power purchased in the financial year to June 2014 was lost (2013: 26%) - the biggest chunk through meter tampering and theft.

The losses have soared since then. From June to December 28.8% was lost, City Power told Moneyweb.

Energy Measurement Consulting technical director Eric Bott says the 3.5 million MWh of electricity lost in that year would have been enough to supply 600 000 middle class households for a year.

The monetary value of these losses amounts to R2.3 billion in 2013/14, comprising R1.5 billion as a result of non-technical losses (theft and meter tampering) and R742 million as a result of technical losses, according to City Power’s Annual Report.

These values are calculated at cost. City Power says in its annual report if the electricity lost due to theft and meter tampering was sold, the city could have earned R3 billion. This is double the potential value of such losses in the previous financial year.

Of the 28.17% in the 2014 financial year, 9% was due to technical losses, which is not much higher than the norm of 8% for big cities, says Ratings Afrika analyst Leon Claassen.

But non-technical losses came to 19.17 %. This is a huge issue, he says.

City Power says non-technical losses are a result of among other things theft, the by-passing of meters, illegal decallibration of meters, damaged meters, faulty voltage and current transformers, billing errors and customers without meters.

The entity says it is trying to curb non-technical losses by installing automated metering systems, replacing faulty meters, the automation of systems to acquire new customers and change meters, an anonymous hotline to report theft, vandalism and tampering and random and targeted audits, followed by the removal of illegal connections and normalising supply.

City Power told Moneyweb it has set up a task team to address the problem and improve revenue collection, recover lost revenue and achieve accurate billing for large power users and domestic customers.

“The project has a six-month lifespan and we expect to see the outcomes over the next two years,” the entity told Moneyweb.

Bott , who has assisted City Power in some of its investigations, says corporate electricity theft overshadows that at residential level and many of the big culprits are electricity resellers. “The problem is that the cases have to go to court and it can take very long to recover the money.”

He says about 50 people have already been arrested as a result of City Power’s efforts to curb electricity theft, many of them officials who assist the culprits.

City Power’s sales dropped by almost 9% in the 2013/14 financial year and its revenue increased by a mere 0.07%, in spite of an average 7.05% tariff increase. The gross margin shrunk from 34.72% in the previous financial year to 27.6%.

Classen says the huge amount of money that City Power is losing is of great concern, since it could have been spent on service delivery. He says it raises questions about the management of the enitity. “The infrastructure is there; management should see to it that it is well managed and the money is collected.”

He says the loss in revenue will impact on City Power’s ability to do the necessary maintenance, which may lead to a further increase in technical losses. “Maintenance is the first place where people cut if revenue is under pressure.”

Claassen said City Power is of critical importance to the City of Joburg and its finances.

In 2013/14 more than half of the city’s revenue was from service charges and electricity income represented 61% of that – down from 63% in the previous financial year.

He said Johannesburg makes the biggest contribution to South Africa’s GDP and if production in this hub is hampered due to problems with City Power’s operations or finances it can impact the whole economy.

[4x4BEES]

Classen says the huge amount of money that City Power is losing is of great concern, since it could have been spent on service delivery. He says it raises questions about the management of the enitity. “The infrastructure is there; management should see to it that it is well managed and the money is collected.”

But would it have been spent on service delivery??

[Bushwacker]

Good thing we live in modern times, with modern technology... Oh wait…

[Mud Dog]

The first good news in a long time came from Eskom’s Medupi power station on Monday, when the utility announced that its unit six delivered its first power to the national grid at 11h03.

It will however take several months of fine-tuning before the full 794MW generation capacity will consistently be available to augment South Africa’s restricted power system.

Eskom said in a statement that the long-awaited synchronisation, or first power, “is the process whereby the generator in the unit is electrically connected to the national power grid, in such a way that its power is perfectly aligned with all the other generators to generate and deliver electricity into the national power grid.”

Eskom CEO Tshediso Matona said the synchronisation is the final stage towards full commercial power, which may follow in three months.

The delivery of Medupi’s first unit (Unit 6) was expected in December 2013, but delayed due to faulty boiler welds and strikes on the Medupi site. The project came back on track after an agreement between Eskom, management and unions and synchronisation was scheduled for December 24 last year.

Eskom had to abandon its widely published 100-day countdown and it battled to meet the technical requirements in the ramp-up towards synchronisation.

Expectations that the unit would be synchronised before January 15 and then February 28 were not met and Eskom’s most recent message that it would happen before the end of March was met with some cynicism.

Moneyweb learnt from sources at Medupi last week that the synchronisation was very close, but Eskom wanted to make sure all the i’s were dotted and t’s crossed before making a public announcement.

Unit 5 and Kusile

While units were initially scheduled to be synchronised at intervals of six months, Eskom earlier indicated that the delivery of unit five, which is next, has been delayed because resources were redirected to unit six. Unit five may only be completed in another year and the other units are expected at six-month intervals thereafter.

If Medupi unit six was delivered in December 2013 and Eskom stuck to delivering the other units at six-month intervals thereafter, 2 382MW of additional generation capacity would have been added by now which could have prevented load shedding in coming days.

The delays are also costing Eskom dearly in financial terms, as it has to pay high financing costs on its new build projects without it generating any revenue yet.

In anticipation of commercial operation, Eskom said a power station manager has been appointed and a core set of people have been trained who will operate the power station.

“Approximately 350 men and women are waiting to join the force of South Africans making history when the unit gets operational. While Unit 6 is the first of Medupi’s six units, it should be noted that all required auxiliary services for the entire power station are ready to ensure that Medupi’s total output of 4 764MW is fully synchronised to the South African power grid,” Matona added.

The deadline for delivery of the first unit from Eskom’s other new coal-fired station Kusile, was earlier this year also extended by a year to early 2016. No clear reason was given for this.

Forecast for the week

Eskom has forecast that electricity demand will outstrip supply every day from Tuesday until Friday this week. For Tuesday a deficit of 2 179MW is forecast, 2 064MW on Wednesday, 2 123MW on Thursday and 343MW on Friday.

[Mud Dog]

This received via e-mail.


Hardly surprising that nothing works any more !!


I am a contractor and I have worked at the Medupi Power Station. I wish to add a few comments to your e-mail.

The working staff gets the last day of each month off as well as half the previous day for pay day.
General workers arrive between eight and nine and start working on the new substations by ten.
Lunch starts at about 11:30 and finishes about 14:00
They leave at about 15:30
These are the general workers pulling in new cables, moving panels etc.
So very little real work gets done because of the short working hours.

I was working in a substation. The air conditoning system is not working because the controller is the wrong type. It has taken four months to find a replacement.
It was 40 degrees in the substation

The two main chimneys at Medupi have been built facing the wrong direction. They are 180 degrees the wrong way round.
This means the pipework will all have to be changed. The efficiency of the blowers will be affected as the pipework is incorrect.

The management of staff is a mess. The staff sit and look at you if you ask them to do anything. They know that if they don’t like what you are asking,
they can strike and they have done it. So nobody messes with them.

The engineer who signed off the building of the chimneys the wrong way round has dissapeared. There was insufficient management oversight.
The wrong air conditioning unit in the substation is also due to lack of management.

The experience I had there was that basically no one is in charge.
No one takes the lead for fear of being fired for not performing
The skill set to do the work is not there.

And all this in the name of BEE.
---------------
Lunch

Apparently the "kitchen" or food contract is run by the local ANC mayor or leader
The workers are guaranteed a hot lunch every day
There is a central kitchen and mess.
Thus a worker who is an hour away from the kitchen, is transported in a little bus. His lunch hour only starts when he picks up the plate to be served.
So an hour lunch break lasts 2 or 3 hours in some sections
When the workforce was on strike the lunch providers were paid full value - not just the profit section even though they were not supplying any meals.
The lunch contract has come up for review 3 times and every time the same person is awarded the contract despite better or other bids
Now this is just lunch.
Imagine the rest ?

[Mud Dog]

Eskom - new coalface of cadre deployment

Mandy de Waal



Government, the sole shareholder of Eskom, has moved lock, stock and two smoking barrels into the engine room of South Africa’s state owned power utility. This is not good news.

When Tshediso Matona was appointed to Eskom’s top position, he was one of the first people in the driver seat of the power utility who didn’t have a long history with that organisation. “Sometimes too much is made of cadre deployment within Eskom,” says Chris Yelland who has covered the state owned organisation up close for eight years.

An energy analyst and the publisher of trade titles that cover the sector, Yelland says equity targets at Eskom are aggressively implemented, but stresses that this is the first time in decades that government is getting seriously involved with the management of SA’s national provider of electricity.

Previously the ANC and government had a hands-off approach to Eskom, in part because of the utility’s successful ‘Electricity for All’ campaign conceived shortly before the dawn of SA’s democracy, and the subsequent shareholder compact to reduce the price of electricity in real terms year-on-year for a decade. “In the past, Eskom’s strategy was to keep government out of the engine room of Eskom because its leadership thought that the state didn’t have the skill, experience or wherewithal to run Eskom,” he says.

Here Yelland speaks specifically about former Eskom CEO, Ian McRae. As long as Eskom performed and met the objectives of government, there was no need for the state to intervene in the utility. “McRae’s strategic objective was to take the Eskom ship through the choppy waters of SA’s democratic change. Eskom survived the transition intact. In fact Eskom’s reputation with the ANC was high because of the ‘Electricity for All’ campaign,” Yelland says.

‘Electricity for All’ was McRae’s campaign to democratise the provision of power.

“Now that Eskom is failing to build new generation capacity on time and within budget - with the consequences of deferred maintenance, declining generation performance, and with regular load shedding - things are very different,” says Yelland. Eskom is in trouble operationally, financially and environmentally - an open invitation for government to get into the engine room.

Currently Eskom’s debt to equity ratio is too high, and this will get higher still as the utility seeks to acquire more debt at increased cost, whilst constraining electricity consumption as it struggles to bring new capacity on stream. As the price of electricity increases, customers will likely use less electricity. In a vicious circle, with declining revenues and increasing costs, Eskom is set to experience cash flow problems, forcing the utility to seek still further price increases from its customers. Meanwhile equity bale-outs from the state will be borne by the taxpayer – much like other badly performing state owned enterprises.

The appointment by government of Motana - the former director general of Public Enterprises - and the establishment of a so-called ‘war room’ heavily populated with government officials to help crisis manage Eskom, shows that the state has moved in. “While this is inevitable in view of Eskom’s poor performance, it is unlikely that government will do much better, as it simply doesn’t have the experience or knowledge of how to fix Eskom,” Yelland says.

Matona’s appointment had just been announced when Mail & Guardian’s investigative team, amaBhungane, questioned his capability. “He was weak as a director general,” declared an anonymous former colleague who knew Matona when he was the director general of public enterprises. “He could never do the things that needed to be done. He couldn’t manage his own office, let alone Eskom,” the source said to the investigative weekly.

“For me, this is not a personal issue, as I don’t know Mr. Matona – it’s a matter of cold hard facts. One needs to compare the size and scale of Eskom to that of Public Enterprises to get an understanding of the challenge,” Yelland says. Public Enterprises as a government department employs a couple of hundred people and has a budget of some R259.8 million. Eskom is a technical and engineering organisation that employs just over 40 000 and has a turnover of about R150 billion a year.

“No matter how intractable the Eskom problems are right now, government may not be able to do much better,” says Yelland, explaining that Matona is a former civil servant and bureaucrat to whom Eskom reported, and that government places ideological constraints on decision making at the utility. “The best thing for Eskom may be to take on external strategic equity partners or sell some assets, but these are options a Tripartite Alliance aligned government can’t consider”.

The other bad news is the bureaucratic effect of the state moving in. “The move by government into the engine room comes with enormous baggage,” says Yelland. Think of Eskom operating more like a government department, or pouring treacle over the cogs of machines. Things become more laboured, burdensome and slower.

In December 2014, Minister in the Presidency, Jeff Radebe, announced that government Cabinet had established an Eskom ‘war room’ that comprised officials from Eskom and the Departments of Energy, Public Enterprises, Trade and Industry, Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Economic Development Department and Water Affairs, overseen by Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa.

This doesn’t necessarily realise the aphorism ‘more hands make light work’. Au contraire, it has introduced a new layer protocol that Yelland says may serve to slow down decision making and limit possible solutions that jar with the Tripartite Alliance’s ideology. This includes providing independent power producers with the right to non-discriminatory access to the grid on level playing fields with Eskom, the establishment of an electricity market in South Africa, Eskom taking on strategic equity partners, or listing on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange.

The bottom line? Winter is coming and if you haven’t already done so now’s the time to invest in viable alternatives including standby power supplies.

[Mud Dog]

Eskom plant performance even worse this year – Nersa
(Antoinette Slabbert)


The performance of Eskom’s generation fleet has deteriorated dramatically in the first quarter of 2015, according to the national energy regulator’s (Nersa) latest System Adequacy Report dated March 30.

Instead of reducing its maintenance backlog by doing more scheduled maintenance, Eskom is clearly increasingly plagued by unexpected breakdowns. The capacity unavailable due to such breakdowns has increased by a staggering 46.8% from 2014.

The document, based on Eskom’s own reports to Nersa, shows that a full 28.85% of Eskom’s generation capacity, that is 12 149MW, was on average unavailable in the three months from January to March this year. This is a dramatic increase from 22.2% or 9 346MW in 2014.

Eskom’s stated target is 80% plant availability with 10% out on planned and 10% on unplanned maintenance.

While suspended Eskom CEO Tshediso Matona vowed in January to increase planned maintenance, it only increased marginally from 9.87% of available capacity or 4 157MW in 2014, to 10.76% or 4 530MW in the first quarter of 2015.

Unplanned maintenance, increased from 12.32% of available capacity (5 189MW) in 2014, to 18.1% or 7 619MW. That is an increase of almost 47% in MW terms.

The rapid deterioration of plant performance is clear when taking into account that unplanned maintenance stood 4 993MW in 2013. Planned maintenance was at 4 015MW and on average a total of 21.39% of generation capacity or 9 008MW was unavailable.

According to the report Eskom’s total generation capacity, including imported power and power purchased form independent producers, will increase from 45 563MW last year to 49 291MW in 2015.

Last year Nersa measured Eskom’s total reserve margin at 31.72%, but forecasts a drop to 24.67% this year. This represents the difference between the annual peak demand and total available capacity, including imported power and power purchased form independent producers. The margin is expected to increase to 26.12% next year and 28.25% in 2017.

Shaun Nel, spokesperson of the Energy Intensive User Group (EIUG) that represents Eskom’s biggest industrial customers, says it is of great concern that Eskom is clearly not making any headway with its maintenance backlog.

He says the EIUG is daily keeping track of Eskom’s planned and unplanned outages and it is clear the increase in breakdowns is preventing Eskom from doing the much needed scheduled maintenance. “Today 13 500MW was out of service (planned and unplanned outages),” Nel said on Tuesday. This number exceeds the average total amount of capacity unavailable in the first quarter.

The utility reverted to stage 1 load shedding on Tuesday afternoon.

Nel says Eskom is also restricted by a lack of skills to do the plant maintenance. He says the utility has requested assistance from the original equipment manufacturers, but is battling to get the necessary visas to bring their skilled workers to South Africa.

The EIUG has been concerned for some time about the quantity as well as the quality of maintenance done by Eskom. Nel says the breakdowns often occur shortly after a plant is brought back to service after scheduled maintenance.

Eskom was approached for comment, but did not take the opportunity to do so.

[Mud Dog]

Eskom upgrades load shedding to phase 3


Eskom announced at about 16:20 on Tuesday that it has upgraded its load shedding to Stage 3, which means the amount by which consumers have to reduce electricity demand has doubled.

Some consumers will now be hit by load shedding twice on the same day.

During Stage 2 load shedding - implemented since 6:00 on Tuesday - electricity consumption has to be reduced by 2 000 MW. During Stage 3 it increases to 4 000 MW.

This comes as more than 14 000 MW of generation capacity was unavailable on Monday, comprising 5 364 MW of capacity taken offline for planned maintenance and 8 717 MW being unavailable due to unexpected breakdowns.

The amount of unavailable capacity in the first quarter of 2015 was at an average of 12 149 MW (28.85%), up from 9 346 MW (22.2% in 2014).

Reuters reported that unplanned outages increased to 9 500 MW on Tuesday, forcing the increased load shedding.

"At this stage it is not clear how long it will take to fix the problem," Eskom spokesman Khulu Phasiwe told Reuters.

According to the utility’s system status bulletin issued on Monday night, the outlook for the rest of the week is also bleak, with forecast demand outstripping supply every day until Sunday.

[Mud Dog]

No more load shedding in Joburg – if you behave


Listen to an interview with Sicelo Xulu - MD of City Power, on smart meters here.

The City of Joburg and its power utility City Power announced a pilot project on Tuesday aimed at saving its customers, especially businesses and industry, from the devastating effect of load shedding.

The scheme, named Load Limiting, is aimed at households and will only be implemented when Eskom signals the need the reduce the electricity demand.

According to a statement electricity users with smart meters will be sent an SMS and a message will flash on the interface of these meters when they need to reduce their electricity consumption.

Based on the average household consumption, excluding non-essential items, they will be informed of the limit on their consumption. Since they will be able to read how much they consume, they have the opportunity to switch off devices in order to achieve the required reduction by switching off geysers, stoves and other energy-intensive appliances.

If they comply, there will be no power cuts. If they don’t the power will be cut for 30 seconds. This will be repeated five times. If the consumption is still above the required limit, the power will be cut for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, the whole process will repeat itself.

Currently 65 000 households are equipped with the smart meters necessary for this solution. This is expected to be increased to 150 000 by October.

The 65 000 households already have the potential of yielding 153 MW of demand reduction. This is significant, since Eskom requires City Power to reduce its demand by up to 150 MW during Stage 1 load shedding, 250 MW during Stage 2 and 600 MW during Stage 3.

By just implementing Load Limiting at the current 65 000 households, City Power will be able to avoid Stage 1 load shedding for the whole of Johannesburg.

Joburg mayor Parks Tau said: “The City of Johannesburg is South Africa’s financial and business hub that contributes substantially to the country’s GDP. The economic development of Johannesburg hinges closely to the uninterrupted supply of energy to power businesses and households. Through this intervention, we will ensure that we not only keep the lights on for many households, but we help to stimulate the development of Johannesburg and contribute to making the City the preferred investment destination.”

City Power Managing Director, Sicelo Xulu says an extensive educational drive will be undertaken to educate consumers about the new system before it is fully implemented.

City Power has also implemented other strategies to limit consumption during periods of constraint in an effort to avert load shedding. This includes ripple control which provides the utility with the ability to remotely switch off energy-guzzling geysers.

Xulu says: “Through the implementation of Ripple Control, City Power is able to control approximately 110 MW of electricity, the rollout of solar water geysers around Johannesburg has generated an additional saving of 60 MW of power and the Kelvin power station has contributed an additional 150 MW of capacity.