Electric power lines are seen in Stilfontein, on July 23, 2023. (Photo by MARCO LONGARI / AFP)
South Africa’s state power utility increased the amount of scheduled outages because of delays in returning generating units to services and breakdowns at five other plants.
So-called loadshedding is being increased to stage 5 - in which 5,000 megawatts is removed from the grid - until 5 a.m. on Tuesday, Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. said in a statement published on Twitter on Monday. Thereafter, stage 4 loadshedding will be implemented until further notice, it said.
South African Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa is "worried and extremely upset” about delays in returning a unit of the Koeberg nuclear power plant to service, the Daily Maverick reported.
Unit 1 at Koeberg, which generates 920 megawatts of power, has been offline since December for planned maintenance, refueling and life-extension works and was meant to return to service 10 weeks ago, the Johannesburg-based news website said.
The delay in returning the unit to operation "presents the real danger of the overlap between the delayed return of Unit 1 and also the taking out of Unit 2,” it quoted Ramokgopa as saying.
Unit 2, which also generates 920 megawatts, is scheduled to go offline for refurbishment in September, it said.
South African power-project developer G7 Renewable Energies is seeking to block new rules governing the connection of plants to the national electricity grid, saying they are flawed and will impair the addition of more generation capacity.
Eskom said in June it had introduced the so-called Interim Grid Capacity Allocation Rules to avoid the "hogging” of grid capacity and ensure only so-called shovel-ready projects are allocated capacity. That was after private generation projects were sidelined, in part because of a lack of connections to the grid.
Eskom said it wasn’t immediately able to comment.
Eskom canceled coal-supply agreements and construction contracts valued at 11 billion rand ($613 million), as the South African authorities crack down on crime at the state-owned utility, President Cyril Ramaphosa said.
Litigation by Eskom has also had coal-supply agreements worth 3.7 billion rand declared invalid, while other coal and construction deals worth 10 billion rand have been set aside, Ramaphosa said in response to a question from an opposition lawmaker.
