The government will deploy former Eskom engineers and energy experts to a number of power stations on Monday in a bid to improve the energy availability factor.
THE GOVERNMENT will deploy former Eskom engineers and energy experts to a number of power stations on Monday in a bid to improve the energy availability factor.
Minister of Electricity Kgosientso Ramokgopa said they have decided to go station by station as part of measures to deal with the load shedding crisis.
He said they have so far identified four power stations that will be first in line to be fixed by former Eskom engineers and other energy experts.
The technical experts will go to Matla, Kriel, Majuba and Kendal power stations.
Ramokgopa said they wanted to increase the energy availability factor to between 60% and 65% in the next few months and this will reduce the stages of load shedding.
“We will be engaging these technical experts and they will be at the power stations by June 5, that is Monday,” said Ramokgopa.
He said in Matla power station the target was to improve the energy availability by 11%.
“You can see now we are trying to be measured and precise. It’s not in general, we are trying to improve the energy availability factor. We are trying to illustrate to you that this progression of the aggregate energy availability factor increases to 60% to 65% over time, where we are getting these megawatts and to say where exactly is the problem, for example at Matla,” said Ramokgopa.
They will also go to Kriel power station where they want to improve the energy availability factor by 25%.
“We need to make interventions with cooling towers so that they can perform their functions,” he said of the problems at Kriel.
The technical experts will also be at Majuba on Monday to intervene there, said Ramokgopa, adding that they want to improve the energy availability factor by 12%.
“In Majuba, it gives us 3,822MW. We think there is a possibility for us to get an improvement of 12%,” he said.
At Kendal power station they want to improve the energy availability factor by 25%.
