Rolling blackouts announced by South Africa power utility
November 2, 2014, 9:15 am

Eskom provides 95% of South Africa’s power [GCIS]

South Africa’s state-owned electricity utility Eskom said on Sunday that it may have to impose national load shedding this coming week due to a cracked coal storage silo at its Majuba power station.

The silo, which stores over 10,000 tons of coal, cracked on Saturday afternoon. This affected coal supplies to all six units at the power station. It was generating 1,300 Megawatt (MW) at the time.

“Teams are in the process of dispatching mobile coal feeders to site. In the unlikely event that this contingency is unsuccessful, it may impact the full supply from the power station,” Eskom said on Sunday.

Eskom provides 95 per cent of the country’s power.

Eskom said load shedding will be used under emergency conditions for limited periods and they have developed three schedules. Stage 1 allows for up to 1,000 MW of the national load to be shed, while Stage 2 allows for up to 2,000 MW of the national load to be shed and Stage 3 allows for up to 4,000 MW of the national load to be shed.

Load shedding will be implemented in most instances in 2 hour blocks (with an additional 30 minutes for switching between blocks) during the period 05:00 am to 21:30 pm. The Eskom website currently shows that a Stage 2 load shedding is in place.

Lack of new generating capacity has hampered South Africa’s economic growth over the past few years as Eskom battles to bring new capacity on line. The Medupi power station at Lephalale in the Limpopo province was originally scheduled to connect to the national grid with the first of six 800 MW units in 2011, but this is now scheduled for 24 December 2014 with normal commercial operation due in the first quarter 2015.

Eskom in February declared two national power emergencies as forecast peak demand was below available capacity. Current available capacity is of the order of 32,000 MW, while peak winter demand is normally above 37,000 Megawatts. In 2012 and 2013 Eskom managed that 5,000 MW gap by reducing planned maintenance in winter and by buying back power from ferrochrome producers. On 6 March 2014, Eskom implemented the first nation-wide load-shedding since 2008.

The latest system status bulletin showed that capacity available to meet peak demand on 30 October was 31, 293 MW, while demand was expected to be 30 952 MW or a spare capacity margin of only 341 MW or 1%. The international norm is to have a spare capacity margin of 15%. Current planned maintenance on 30 October was 3,364 MW, while unplanned outages were 8,752 MW.

At 10:40 am the lights went out in Lephalale Mall.

Helmo Preuss in Lephalale, South Africa for The BRICS Post