Day: February 2, 2023

With the ongoing load shedding, government is investigating whether the crisis fulfills the legal requirements for the declaration of a National State of Disaster.

Addressing members of the media on the deliberations of the Cabinet Lekgotla, which is underway in Pretoria, Minister in the Presidency, Mondli Gungubele, said government is investigating the call for the declaration of a State of Disaster.

“I have asked my team to analyse the impact of the State of Disaster. We hope to, in a short space of time, give a report [on the findings of the investigation into the State of Disaster] and what government does with that is not in my hands,” Gungubele said on Thursday.

When the COVID-19 outbreak was declared a global pandemic in 2020, government declared a National State of Disaster, which empowered it to take measures that prevented many more people from becoming severely ill and saved countless lives.

“There is a strong desire in government to find ways of ending load shedding as quickly as possible. There are a lot of interventions [that government is implementing to address the energy challenge]… We are fast tracking emergency power, the issue of skills and upping the ante in terms of maintaining the plants.

“Those are issues that are within our hands. Of course there is a call… that a State of Disaster declaration [would] help us jump other processes, which sometimes do not respond to the situation.

“There is a legal base [that needs to be fulfilled], investigations are being done. I hope we will be advised as quickly as possible in a manner that is consistent with the crisis that we are confronted with,” Gungubele said.

The Minister assured citizens that work is underway to improve the performance of power stations to reduce stages of load shedding, while driving work to bring more capacity onto the grid as quickly as possible.

There is a clear plan, announced by President Ramaphosa in July 2022, to ease load shedding and then to end it. The plan was developed through extensive consultation and endorsed by energy experts as providing the best and fastest path towards energy security.

Since the adoption of the Energy Action Plan, progress has been made in several areas, including:

The licensing requirement for embedded generation projects has been removed. Since SA first raised the licensing threshold to 100 MW, the pipeline of private sector projects has grown to more than 100 projects, with over 9 000 MW of capacity. The first of these projects is expected to connect to the grid by the end of this year.

Agreements have been signed with independent power producers for 26 renewable energy projects, which together will generate around 2 800 MW. Construction on these projects will soon start.

An additional 300 MW has been imported through the Southern African Power Pool, and negotiations are underway to secure a potential 1 000 MW from neighbouring countries.

Eskom has also launched a programme to purchase up to 1 000 MW of power from companies with existing generation capacity for a period of three years.

Government has cut red tape and streamlined regulatory processes, reducing the timeframes for environmental authorisations, registration of new projects and grid connection approvals.

Government has established a team of independent experts to work closely with Eskom to diagnose the problems at poorly performing power stations and take action to improve plant performance. Six power stations have been identified for particular focus over the coming months in order to recover additional capacity.

Assessing government’s performance

President Cyril Ramaphosa has convened government leaders at the Cabinet Lekgotla to deliberate government’s priorities for the year ahead. The meeting is being attended by the leadership structures representing all spheres of government.

They included Ministers, Deputy Ministers, Premiers, Directors-General and leadership of the South African Local Government Association.

The outcome of the meeting will chart a way forward for the year to be announced by the President during the State of the Nation Address (SONA), taking place on 9 February 2023.

Gungubele informed media that discussions would be on energy, interest rates, crime, poverty, unemployment (especially youth joblessness) and inequality.

“This Lekgotla is going to spend a lot of time analysing our performance and answering the question, ‘What are the key programmes that can make a different in a short space of time during the course of this year?’

“In other words, how is the infrastructure performing? Where are the gaps and how do we correct that? [Discussions will also include] the state of service delivery, as there is a huge challenge in this area.

“There are a number of people who don’t have access to water and access to ablution services — all the dignity services that are mainly delivered by local government,” the Minister said.

The meeting will also tackle government’s fiscal goals and keeping the commitments it has made in this regard.

“We need to find a balance between a fiscal deficit and the debts that must be paid out. There is a challenge about the fiscal deficit, that it must be kept within a particular level and at the same time, we must have money available to contribute to service delivery, infrastructure and all other growth enhancing interventions,” the Minister said.

Source: South African Government News Agency

Eskom board member, Mteto Nyati, says the power utility and its board is working intently on five key priorities to improve the performance of power stations and ease load shedding as swiftly as possible.

He was speaking on Thursday during a media briefing to update South Africans on the challenges facing the power utility.

Nyati said there are priorities that require day-to-day focus, whilst others require the power utility to be “slightly more strategic”.

The five priorities include the 24-month generation recovery plan, which has two key elements.

“The first [element] is to make sure that we have and we guard the performance at the current flagship power stations. There are four power stations that are doing very well [and] it is very important that we look after these power stations. The second one is to make sure that the top six power stations where we continue to have challenges, we focus on them [and] we drive a thorough maintenance programme at those top six power stations. It is important for us to remain focused and deliver on that plan,” Nyati said.

The second priority for the board is planned and unplanned outages, including at Koeberg unit 1 – which has a generating capacity of some 920MW – and the three Kusile power station units, which have been offline since October, taking with them some 2 160MW of generating capacity.

“In terms of Koeberg 1, which is a planned outage and is up to this point going in line with the plan, it is important that we deliver and we bring that back when it is supposed to come back [without] delays because it will add a significant amount of stability that we need.

“The Kusile 1, 2 and 3 that are unplanned outages… up to now, we’re looking at some of these coming back only about a year from now. It is important that we look at ways and means of accelerating the fixing of these units. There may be things that are required such as exemptions. We, as the board… need to look… at means to get those exemptions,” Nyati said.

He revealed that the “people and culture” of Eskom is another top priority for the board.

“We have a majority of Eskom employees who are great people doing exceptional work, who are so committed to this company and are also committed to the country. It is important that we continue to support them, so that can help us to execute this recovery plan.

“It is also important that we find ways and means of incentivising them so that they continue to do what is required, as this…planned maintenance is being executed,” Nyati said.

Another top priority for the board is having funds to purchase the diesel used to run Eskom’s open cycle gas turbines (OCGTs), which are critical in staving off at least one stage of load shedding.

“We cannot afford to run out of funds for diesel throughout this period so… we as the board, together with management, are looking at ways and means of making sure that we have the funding because running those [OCGTs] is important for us to be able to provide and reduce the level or the stages of load shedding,” he said.

Nyati stressed that working with government is another top priority for the power utility.

“The government enablers… are so important for us to get to an environment where we are able to bring in new capacity and negotiating, and engaging with various stakeholders in government on behalf of management is something that we are prioritising,” he said.

Meanwhile, load shedding is expected to be downgraded to Stage 4 from Friday, with further de-escalation to Stage 3 on Saturday.

This after Eskom escalated the rolling power cuts to Stage 6 and Stage 5 this week following breakdowns at several generating units.

Source: South African Government News Agency