Eskom’s Black Friday deal for South Africa — less load-shedding

3 years ago 7

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Eskom has announced that its evening load-shedding schedule will be reduced from stage 3 to stage 2.

“Load-shedding will be maintained at stage 2 continuously until further notice,” the state-owned power utility said.

“There will be no stage 3 load-shedding during the evenings, as had been previously communicated.”

This comes after Eskom announced on Thursday that it would reduce daily load-shedding between 16:00 and 05:00 from stage 4 to stage 3.

The relief was possible because it received diesel supplies from PetroSA that were arranged by the Department of Public Enterprises.

Public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan told parliament on Wednesday that his department secured 50 million litres of diesel for Eskom from PetroSA.

The diesel is reportedly only enough for a few weeks, as PetroSA usually provides Eskom with around 60 million litres of diesel per month — and it is not the only supplier.

Government’s deal with PetroSA came after Eskom told energy analyst Chris Yelland that it had stopped ordering diesel due to budget overruns.

Eskom said it had already spent over R11 billion on diesel – double its budget — and would only be able to order supplies again in April 2023.

This is a major concern, as Eskom uses diesel to power these open-cycle gas turbine (OCGT) power plants — a critical source of emergency electricity generation.

Energy policy and investment advisor Anton Eberhard said Eskom’s decision not to refuel its diesel OCGTs removes 2,067MW of rapid response resources available to the System Operator at the power utility.

“[This] at a time of intermittent and declining coal plant output, increasing the risk of more load-shedding and system failure,” Eberhard warned.

Gordhan did not reveal how much the diesel being sent to Eskom costs, or who was paying.