Eskom and the Department of Public Enterprises have announced several interventions to tackle the ongoing power crisis in South Africa. One of the interventions includes working with former Eskom employees.
ESKOM this week announced the launch of three programmes to procure power for the national grid. The announcement comes as the country grapples with ongoing blackouts.
In a statement, Eskom said that initially the programmes will focus on generators capable of supplying more than one megawatt to the grid. Over time the threshold will be lowered to enable smaller producers to participate.
Eskom’s Sikonathi Mantshantsha said the aim is to sign the first power supply agreement during the course of the current week and for the power to start flowing through the grid as soon as possible.
“Eskom is already importing electricity from some of its neighbours via the Southern African Power Pool, an average 200MW that is being used to augment Eskom generation capacity when the grid is constrained,” Eskom said.
The Department of Public Enterprises announced further interventions to tackle the blackouts.
“We are deeply mindful and concerned of the strain that this places on households and businesses,” said Minister Pravin Gordhan.
He said load shedding was caused by the unplanned breakdown of units and unit trips.
“The power unit trips are mainly part of power stations’ protection systems to safeguard the power stations, employees and equipment,” he said.
The minister said load shedding is implemented as a last resort in view of the shortage of generation capacity and the need to attend to breakdowns.
“All efforts are directed towards returning megawatts lost due to unplanned breakdowns and outages,” he said.
Gordhan has set out five interventions that his department is looking at to address the blackouts.
- The approval for the emergency procurement of 1,000 MW from independent power producers and industrial co-generators. This demonstrates the impact of cutting the red tape and getting approvals within hours instead of months and bringing in new capacity within two months at the very least.
- Additionally, Eskom has the go-ahead to procure more than 200MW from the Southern African Power Pool as part of immediate solutions to the energy shortfall.
- To ensure reliable maintenance of plants, Eskom has recruited former experienced employees and energy experts who responded to the call to assist the power provider to mentor Eskom employees and assist in the execution of the plant operations.
- Through the work of the National Energy Crisis Committee, the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy has installed a process to procure additional megawatts from the markets through bid window 5 and 6.
- NECOM (National Energy Crisis Committee) has visited power stations to assess the full extent of the challenges to identify short- to- long term interventions.
“This information will further assist the implementation of the energy actions as announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa in July and the work of the energy crisis committee is already at an advanced stage,” Gordhan said.
The country is currently on Stage 5 load shedding due to planned outages and breakdowns.
