[miningmx.com] – SOUTH African power utility, Eskom, said it planned “a maintenance festival” this weekend (April 25-26) in an effort to prepare the country for winter peak demand of some 36,000MW.
Asked how the ‘festival’ translated in terms of expected load-shedding over the period, an Eskom spokesman promised to clarify the matter.
The announcement is the first under the leadership of Brian Molefe who was appointed acting CEO of Eskom on April 20. In it, Eskom alluded to its successes in improving the availability of power and its efforts to increase capacity 17,000MW by 2019 – a clear attempt by Molefe to lift spirits at the troubled utility.
“In the next five years Eskom will add over 17,000MW of new capacity to the national grid; 9,756km of new transmission lines and 42,470MVA of transmission strengthening. To date over 6,238MW of new capacity has already been added and 5,814km of transmission lines and 29 655MVA have been installed,” said Molefe.
However, he outlined the challenge ahead of installing sufficient buffer power needed to prevent load-shedding throughout the winter period, which occurs from June to August in South Africa.
“We have a maintenance backlog due to commitments made to ‘keep the lights on’ and this has led to deteriorating power station availability and subsequent load shedding,” Eskom said in its statement.
“We however need a minimum of 3000MW and maximum of 5000MW buffer either through supply-side or demand-side options in order to close the backlog within three to five years and avoid load-shedding. Residential customers can make the biggest difference as demand increases mainly in the evenings,” it said.
While there is expected to be sufficient power supply to meet demand for most part of the day, in winter the load increase could be up to 36 000MW particularly over the short sharp evening peak,” it said.
The company has an installed generating capacity of about 42,000MW, but its normal capacity is around 32,000MW because some of its plants are usually under maintenance at any one time. The utility often switches off as much as 3,000MW a day to keep the grid from collapsing under too much demand.
