National
Eskom concerned about diesel reserves, could affect power supply next week─── 11:35 Sun, 23 Nov 2014
Johannesburg - Eskom is concerned about its diesel reserves which could affect electricity supply in the coming week, the parastatal said on Sunday.
"We have a certain amount of diesel, but not full capacity," spokesman Andrew Etzinger said.
"If we need to run the... open gas turbines hard in the first few days of the week we will deplete [our reserves]."
He said the system was expected to be tight in the early part of the week but no rolling blackouts were scheduled.
"We are concerned about the latter part of the week if we are not able to get adequate supplies of diesel."
Eskom had alternative power stations which burned diesel, however, these were expensive to run and would normally only run at peak times.
"Now we are virtually running them on a permanent basis," Etzinger said.
This pushed up Eskom's operating costs.
PetroSA's vice president of corporate affairs Zama Luthuli told the Sunday Times that Eskom had been supplied "in excess of their normal requirements" of diesel.
"We've secured additional supply through imports and we expect the situation to normalise in the coming few days," she was quoted as saying.
Etzinger said Eskom was implementing stage one of scheduled blackouts on Sunday.
On Friday afternoon, Eskom started with scheduled blackouts.
On Thursday, Eskom said the power system was severely constrained as a result of unforeseen technical problems at power stations.
Sapa
