• Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa says that Eskom is still trying to put more space between itself and loadshedding.
• Around 2 500MW of new capacity is expected to come online at the end of August from three different sources.
• Further bolstering the grid is improved maintenance at some of South Africa’s recently trouble power stations.

South Africa’s power utility Eskom is expecting an additional 2 500MW of generation capacity to come online on the national grid by the end of August, Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said on Monday during a media briefing.

Both Medupi Unit 4 and Kusile Unit 6 are expected to begin power generation at their respective power stations, bolstering the grid with 800MW each. Added to this are ongoing efforts to extend the usage of Koeberg Unit 2, one of the two generating units in Africa’s only nuclear power station.

If successful, Unit 2 at Koeberg will add another 980MW to the grid, amounting to enough additional power generation to combat at least two stages of loadshedding.

“We do expect that by the end of August this year, just from the Eskom fleet, we should be getting an additional 2 500MW,” Ramakgopa told the media, adding that continued bolstering of the network after years of rampant blackouts did not mean that loadshedding was a thing of the past.

“I really want to caution that load shedding is not behind us. In the next three weeks or so Eskom will be sharing what the summer outlook is. We are still buoyant about the performance of these generation plants,” he tempered expectations, as per SA News.

“Having said that, we need to caution against any early declaration to decree load shedding as behind us. We do everything possible to resolve this question but the numbers do indicate that we are within touching distance.”

One aspect that is of concern for Eskom and for South Africans, is that issues at Tutuka, Kendal and Kriel power stations are still mounting, but luckily the change of Eskom executive structure has worked in changing the culture of the utility for the better.

“Tutuka has experienced a significant amount of challenges over a period of time… but we are seeing results now. Just this period from March to August, the unplanned capacity loss factor [UCLF] has reduced by 29%. That’s significant from where Tutuka started; they’ve moved from 2 411MW to 949MW,” he said.

“At Kendal, there were major issues with regard to exceeding the emissions standards, so there [were] a number of interventions that had to be made. Today… we were able to reduce the [UCLF] from 2 500MW out and now we’re sitting at about 919MW.”

He added that that Kriel power station “has seen exceptional results” which unplanned capacity loss down 53 percent to around 508MW, a far cry from the situation just last year.

[Image – CC BY-ND 2.0 GovernmentZA on Flickr]