As SA lurched to stage 4 load-shedding yesterday, it emerged that stricken power utility Eskom will need almost R600m more to rectify design defects at its R135bn Medupi power station.
The R594m bill is in addition to the R2.5bn needed to fix unit 4 of the country's second-largest power plant, which was damaged in an explosion caused by staff negligence last year and will not be repaired before 2024.
Deputy President David Mabuza told parliament last week that there were design defects at Medupi that would need to be rectified, and this would be done by the end of 2027. He did not say how much it would cost.
This week, Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha told the Sunday Times: “The cost of fixing the [design] defects is at R594m for the Medupi project. The liability is still to be determined.”
As Eskom scrambled to keep the lights on amid soaring repair requirements, Johannesburg has taken a lead from Cape Town in pushing ahead with contracting private power suppliers to supplement what is currently available.
Tenders close next week for independent power producers (IPPs) to provide Cape Town with 300MW of energy, and the City of Joburg has confirmed it, too, is seeking private partners in a process that kicks off this week with a two-day energy indaba.
The move by the country's two biggest economic hubs is aimed at minimising load-shedding, which peaked at stage 4 this weekend amid warnings by energy expert Mike Rossouw that SA could soon see stage 8 — where consumers would have electricity for only 12 hours out of 24.
Johannesburg executive mayor Mpho Phalatse warned of a potential energy “emergency”, saying the city's more than 6-million residents and thousands of businesses may not realise what a knife-edge Johannesburg is sitting on.
Eskom instituted stage 4 load-shedding again yesterday after the loss of two units at Hendrina power station and one at Lethabo. In addition, Eskom said there was higher than expected electricity demand and a need to preserve diesel supplies, with a tanker with additional supplies arriving in port only tomorrow.
Medupi has been plagued by setbacks since going live in 2016. The explosion at unit 4 last year cut 700MW from Eskom's generation capacity. Other units, as well as the boilers, have several design defects.
Energy expert Ted Blom said the main issue was the plant’s design, which would be difficult to fix.
“To fix the boilers you need to increase the length of the boiler. You have to take it apart and that cannot be done. What Eskom is doing is to improve coal grinders — which convert coal into powder — which will then improve the grinding capacity. These grinders are expensive to run,” he said.
Blom said unit 4 exploded because proper procedures were not followed when purging the generator. He said the purging process takes two to three hours whenever a generator is opened.
“You don't need to purge often, only between two and three years. But generational trips that characterise Medupi mean that a delicate procedure of this nature happens frequently,” he said.
Eskom said fixing boiler defects at its functional generational units at Medupi will cost R594m, while fixing unit 4 would cost R2.5bn and would be completed only by August 2024.
Eskom also revealed that a ninth employee was recently suspended in connection with the unit 4 explosion. Medupi’s acting general manager, Zweli Witbooi, said of the nine, four were senior plant operators and five were managers. The nine are charged with procedural noncompliance, among other charges.
Mabuza said Eskom has made progress in identifying design defects at Medupi, but it will take five years to rectify them.
Mantshantsha told the Sunday Times defects that had to be fixed involved Medupi's milling plant, the pulse jet fabric filter and the gas air heater. “The reheater spray flow is [an additional] approximately R240m at [the] contractor’s cost,” said Mantshantsha.
During a media tour of Medupi on Thursday, Eskom said it had started repairs to defects at three generation units, which, when operating at full capacity, each produce 720MW.
Units 5 and 6 are operating at partial loads to abide by the utility’s emission licence requirements. Witbooi said Eskom planned to carry out work that would allow them to operate at full load.
Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems Africa, the company behind the designs, is contractually obligated to resolve the defects, he said.
Witbooi said specifications were made clear to the manufacturers, “but during operations we found that the equipment supplied did not meet the specifications. On paper and by design, the specifications ticked all the boxes but we found that the equipment did not meet the specifications,” he said.
SA has already experienced 594 hours of blackouts this year as the country races towards the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) 2010-2030 on energy. The IRP national electricity plan, promulgated in 2011, directs the expansion of the electricity supply.
In 2020, as rolling blackouts increased, the Electricity Regulation Act was amended to allow municipalities to buy their own electricity.
Rossouw said if the government could speed this up then it isn't too late for Cape Town and Johannesburg to save themselves from collapse.
He said earlier this week that consumers could see stage 8 blackouts. “Eskom is focusing so much on breakdowns and so little on maintenance they don't have a clue what's happening — that's why we have levels 1, 2 and 3.”
He said in 1999/2000 Eskom was voted the best power utility in the world with plant availability of 90% or more, total breakdowns of 3% or less, and planned maintenance at 7%.
Eskom's latest target was to have 80% of the total fleet available, 10% on planned maintenance and 10% in breakdown mode, Rossouw said.
“The current energy availability factor for the entire fleet is probably 50% or less. Maintenance hardly gets to 10% — maybe 7%, and breakdowns account for 20% or more. So your breakdowns are more than double the maintenance,” he said.
There is no sign of recovery. This year [load-shedding] is worse than it's ever been and Eskom has lost control. Management is being led blind and nobody knows what the hell is going on.
— Energy expert Mike Rossouw
“There is no sign of recovery. This year [load-shedding] is worse than it's ever been and Eskom has lost control. Management is being led blind and nobody knows what the hell is going on.”
He said load-shedding will get far worse: “The reason is Eskom has no choice, it can't allow the system to collapse because it would mean the country would collapse.
“Eskom has not been brought to account. I don't agree that the CEO [Andre de Ruyter] should be fired. He is a good man, but being led by the blind. When he phones [the plants] he is told what he wants to hear.
“We should be very concerned.”
In February, the City of Cape Town launched tenders to procure up to 300MW of renewable energy as part of its efforts to reduce load-shedding — already usually a stage lower than elsewhere in SA thanks to its Steenbras hydroelectric power station.
Tenders close on Thursday, and mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis told the Sunday Times he is “looking forward to seeing the many proposals that will have been submitted.”
In Johannesburg, mayor Phalatse said the city must bolster its coal baseload with renewable energy solutions, which may be cleaner and more cost-effective.
The city's energy sustainability strategy will see an extra 500MW of alternative energy added by gas and solar sources. It said bringing IPPs online will take 18-36 months.
City Power receives 90% of its electricity from Eskom and 10% from the Kelvin Power Station with which it signed a power purchase agreement last year.
Last year the city said it was looking to add 200MW of electricity from photovoltaic farms and rooftop suppliers, 200MW of private photovoltaic electricity generation to the grid, 50MW of gas-powered electricity generation and 25MW capacity from waste to energy in the Robinson Deep Landfill site.
Phalatse said the city would not exclude Eskom completely, but rely on a mixture of suppliers to ensure the blackouts end.
Last week Eskom COO Jan Oberholzer said there had been 32 days of load-shedding since January.
Though the Johannesburg metro has provisionally scraped together just over R1.2bn to help fix City Power’s infrastructure, it is sitting with a R26bn backlog.
Phalatse said 19 of the city's 251 transformers are in critical condition “and need to be replaced”, 14 are in high-risk condition and need to be refurbished, and 29 others are older than 50 years and have exceeded their useful life period, needing replacement.
She said the grid was not designed to be powered up and down at short notice for load-shedding; doing so leads to further breakdowns and faults that could take hours or weeks to restore.
“October will mark 15 years of rolling blackouts, euphemistically referred to as ‘load-shedding’. [These] have had an extremely dire impact on the economy of not just Johannesburg but of the country,” she said.
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