SA 'must cut power'

2006-03-04 07:53

Jan de Lange

Cape Town - Eskom will launch a campaign next week to convince South Africans to consume less electricity because the margin between peak demand and supply will be the smallest in decades this coming winter.

The smaller margin will be intensified by the problems at Koeberg, which will be pumping less than half its normal supply into the network until the end of July.

Normally Koeberg supplies a little below 1 900 MW, but until the end of May it will generate only 600 MW and then raise it to 900 MW up to the end of July.

All the bigger role players in the electricity scene, Eskom excluded, such as big coal mines and large-scale buyers, have been predicting for the past two years that Eskom's ability to supply in peak demand would be exhausted by 2006.

The consternation that followed the power outages of the past fortnight in the Wstern Cape is, however, a timely warning to smaller consumers of what may be coming later this year, especially in the winter months.

Government has taken the blame

The looming power cuts would already have surfaced in 2005 but South Africa had a milder winter than normal and the issue was delayed.

Last year the peak demand - during an exceptionally warm winter - increased by 3.2% to 35 289 MW.

Eskom's total installed generating capacity is 39 154 MW, which includes 2 740 MW only available during peak demand periods and that can only be utilised for short periods, provided by turbine boosters, the hydro-electrical plants at the Gariep Dam and the Drakensberg and Western Cape pump schemes, which can only generate for a maximum 12 hour period.

This leaves 36 414 MW as basic electricity generating capacity from coal-fired power stations and Koeberg, the only nuclear plant.

To provide outage time for power stations requiring maintenance, and unexpected problems that may surface - such as at Koeberg lately - the electricity utility should have between 15% and 20% available in reserve.

Last year the margin dwindled to 9.8%.

The campaign launched by Eskom next week will be aimed at lowering the peak demand, such as the availability of five million low energy light bulbs to households in the Western Cape at subsidized prices, and R200M that will be spent by Eskom to install equipment for the centralised control of domestic geysers, also known as "ripple control".

The main electricity consumers pushing up the peak demand are BHP Billiton with its aluminium smelters in Richards Bay and Maputo, the Swiss commodity giant Xstrata, with 14 aluminium smelters in Mpumalanga and Northwest Province, and African Rainbow Minerals, with their smelters in Mpumalanga.

Eskom really can not be blamed for the crisis.

At an economic growth rate below 3% per year the available peak ability would only have been reached by 2008.

Procrastination on decisions regarding possible privatisation of certain Eskom sectors meant that no new construction for power stations had been initiated between 1999 and 2003.

"Government has accepted the responsibility that new power stations were not built in time," Alec Erwin, minister of public undertakings, said on Friday.

- Beeld