THE South African mining sector fell under familiar pressure today after power utility Eskom increased power rationing to about 4,000MW. This was following the failure of a unit at Eskom’s nuclear facility, Koeberg.
“It’s at stage 6 where we run into major problems,” said Minerals Council CEO, Roger Baxter when asked about the impact of today’s increase to stage 4 ‘load-shedding’. “So miners will be asked to reduce power consumption 20%,” he said.
“We will probably have to shut down some of our mills and concentrators,” said James Wellsted, spokesman for Sibanye-Stillwater. Miners would still be sent underground as there was no safety risk of stage 4 load-shedding.
Eskom said today that its teams were investigating the root cause after Koeberg unit 1 tripped earlier in the day.
“The unit has been disconnected from the grid due to a fault on the turbine side, however the nuclear reactor remains safe,” it said in a statement. “The loss of approximately 930MW unit puts further strain on the generation fleet, necessitating an increase in the stage of load-shedding,” it said.
Eskom said earlier today that stage 2 load-shedding, implemented from the weekend, would continue for the rest of the week (longer than planned) as there had been “some delays” in returning some generation units. “They will now only return during the course of the week,” Eskom had said.
There was modicum of good news, however, as Eskom and the Minerals Council had agreed to establish a team that would look at more effective scheduling in the event of load-shedding, said Baxter. “We need more effective scheduling so we can put in better planning. We have been discussing that already with Eskom and there is agreement on establishing a team to do that.”
Baxter said in February that the appointment of Andre de Ruyter as CEO of Eskom had also resulted in some benefits as he had shown himself to have “… an incredibly good handle on the [energy] crisis”.
“He [De Ruyter] has been remarkably assuring to business,” said Baxter who added the utility’s CEO realised the country was not sitting on the edge of a precipice, but “in it”.
“He has put ideas on table on the criticality of doing proper maintenance with the result of load-shedding over next two years. There is also a willingness to partner with major customers. So right now, he needs to be given the space to get on with the job,” he said.
“We are looking at different options in dealing with the constraints, for instance on how to get more coal on to rail from road,” said Baxter.
