Eskom's chief operations officer, Jan Oberholzer, said planned maintenance on Eskom's plants increased from an average 3,600 megawatts a week before the lockdown began in late March to around 9,800 megawatts in the second week of April.

He said partial load losses had declined by almost half, meaning the national electricity grid would have additional capacity of 3,424 MW for the rest of the current financial year.

As a result of the improvements, Eskom foresaw that the need for load shedding during the winter months had dropped tenfold, from an expected 31 days to three days. 

Load shedding during the winter was likely to be limited to the early evenings and would be staggered, hence consumers would not have outages on consecutive days.
 
Oberholzer stressed, however, that load shedding would remain a reality for the country's consumers "due to the unreliability and the unpredictability of the system" until August 2021, when Eskom was expected to have completed an 18-month schedule of reliability maintenance.

As demand declined to about 11,000 MW due to the shutdown of the economy, Eskom had managed considerable savings on burning open cycle gas turbines to boost capacity, and the company had also resolved critical coal stockpile shortages at all plants, apart from Medupi and Kusile.

By last week, stockpile levels were at 55 days' supply. However, stockyard levels at some power stations had reached their maximum holding capacity and because demand was expected to remain low as the economy reopened in phases, this posed a concern as limits may not be exceeded.

Eskom was engaging with its coal suppliers to scale back deliveries, Oberholzer said.

Given the uncertainty as to when lockdown restrictions would be eased or lifted, Eskom had prepared for several scenarios to allow it to be flexible when electricity demand increased, he said.

He set out a schedule of work that remained to be done at Medupi and Kusile to correct design defects that had bedevilled operations at the country's two biggest power plants.

Modifications had been carried out at Unit 3 at Medupi while it was shut down for 75 days. Unit 6 at the plant had now been taken off-line to be overhauled with units 2,4 and 5 to follow. A similar process would be undertaken at Unit 3 at Kusile.

The work was due to be completed in the next financial year, Oberholzer said.

Eskom last month closed down its Camden power plant in Mpumalanga because of fears that the dam where ash from burning coal is stored could burst.

 Repairs at the plant are only expected to be completed next year.

African News Agency (ANA)