AfrElec: Eskom's ageing fleet still not receiving needed maintenance, as blackouts dog South Africa

South Africa’s struggling power utility Eskom apologised to South Africans on Monday, October 25, as a new round of blackouts left South African without power. It blamed maintenance lags as the main reason for the outages, as its fleet of power plants dealt with a string of breakdowns.

Eskom said in its quarterly system update that it was concerned about the progress of maintenance that had to keep its ageing plants up and running. Some of the plants were 41 years old and showing their age. 

Eskom’s chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer admitted that its “reliability maintenance” was slow going. Eskom has budgeted ZAR8.5bn ($563mn) in the current financial year for running maintenance and a further ZAR8bn for outages, but this had not borne the expected fruit. 

On October 24, Eskom’s plant availability was at a mere 58.5%, as against a target of 70%. The average so far for the current financial year is 65.3%, which compares poorly with the previous year’s 67.9%.

Because the power grid was constantly constrained, Eskom could only complete 18 of its scheduled 84 outages for the year to do the necessary maintenance. A further nine were in progress. Another 22 have been deferred to later in this financial year and ten to the next financial year, which leaves 25 remaining.

Burning expensive diesel

To keep the lights on Eskom has resorted to burning diesel at its open-cycle gas-turbine (OCGT) plants. The usage this year alone has been extensive. 

Eskom group executive for generation Phillip Dukashe said that the OCGT bill stood at a massive ZAR2.5bn and that this ate away at money needed for the maintenance of its plants. 

He said the utility had so far this year produced 772 GWh with its own OCGTs, against a provision for the full year of 211 GWh. This indicates a load factor of 7.3% at year-end against a target of 1%.

Oberholzer noted that, so far this year, it had experienced 342 unit trips against a target of 196, 4,612 MW of load losses against a target of 3,969 MW and 23.1% unplanned load losses against a target of 18%.

Struggling Tutuka

Dukashe admitted that the Tutuka power plant was a great cause for concern, and was in a shocking state. Tutuka has been the single biggest contributor to unplanned breakages so far this year, he said.

In the update Eskom announced it had suspended several employees at its Tutuka power station – one of the plants experiencing breakdowns – and that possible arrests could not be ruled out due to the “shocking state of neglect” that has largely contributed to the drop in availability.

Three major incidents have jointly further reduced the available generation capacity by more than 2,000 MW at Tutuka.

Dukashe explained severe challenges to the reliability maintenance programme that is aimed at correcting years of neglect and over-utilisation of the generation fleet.

He said the generation fleet remained unreliable and unpredictable.