Over a year ago, Eskom group chief executive officer, André de Ruyter stood up during a briefing (that took place during loadshedding) to say that the utility’s generation capacity would remain vulnerable for approximately 18 months.
Today, in similar fashion to its briefing a year ago – that is to say in the midst of loadshedding – Eskom had yet more bad news for South Africans during its State of the System address.
There have been negligible improvements to the grid. For instance, planned maintenance has improved by 12 percent. The Generation Recovery Programme (sometimes referred to as the 9-Point Plan) is having a small effect on Eskom’s processes but as de Ruyter says, the task Eskom faces is gargantuan and there is work left to do.
“While there is an improvement on some of aspects of the generation plant due to concerted efforts by Eskom employees, we are not where we want to be in terms of performance. The ultimate aim is to improve performance to reduce the risk of loadshedding. The enormity of this task cannot be overstated,” the group CEO said.
It’s important to note that Eskom is not talking about eliminating loadshedding, rather decreasing the risk thereof.
But the deadline of 18 months Eskom set itself in January 2020 still applies right?
Not exactly.
In fact, that deadline has now been pushed out to September and even then we may still see loadshedding, just less frequently.
“The unreliability of the ageing fleet, with an uncertainty of about 6 000MW of capacity at any given time, will remain until the reliability maintenance programme is able to address the historical maintenance backlog. The power system remains vulnerable and volatile with the risk of loadshedding significantly reduced after the completion of the reliability maintenance by September 2021,” explained chief operating officer at Eskom, Jan Oberholzer.
Once again, Eskom appears to be tempering expectations by being as vague as possible with regards to loadshedding.
When we heard that Eskom was going to focus on implementing better operational efficiencies in 2020, we wondered out loud whether this seed would take. As it so happens, Eskom appears to be struggling to implement these improvements.
“Recovering the operational performance is our top priority and we will not compromise on reliability maintenance and mid-life refurbishment,” said Oberholzer, reminding us that similar words were said in 2020.
Now that’s not to say there have been no improvements, there have been a few but these are not even big enough to classify as small wins.
For instance, Eskom says that the “resilience of the power system during heavy rains and the cyclone storm Eloise is a clear indication that the significant investment in the wet coal management strategy is paying dividends”. Except, earlier this year, heavy rains forced South Africa into loadshedding when rain caused by tropical storm Eloise in the Lephalale area meant that coal couldn’t be delivered to Medupi power station.
Of course, COVID-19 and lockdown played a part in delaying maintenance but what gets to us is that we keep hearing about this 9-point plan and yet, as those words leave an executive’s mouth, power cuts happen throughout South Africa.
This is an especially hard pill to swallow when the utility that is failing at doing the one thing it’s meant to, starts off a State of the System press release with, “Eskom is making notable progress in the recovery of its operational performance”.
Eskom has not made notable progress, however, and in fact, more often than not it feels like it is rolling backwards.
South Africans want Eskom to get its house in order, as September is a little over six months away and if it announce that loadshedding will be implemented due to a lack of generation capacity, we suspect many will want to read the power utility the riot act.
