Posts tagged with 'Load shedding'

 

Eskom warns – Be prepared for ‘load shedding at short notice’

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The struggling utility has been forced to go the expensive route of using water and diesel due to the breakdown of some units.

The “unexpected loss” of some of Eskom’s generation units over the weekend has left the electricity system “severely constrained”, the struggling energy utility said in a statement.

While the statement said load shedding was “not expected”, it also said the “unexpected loss of additional units may result in load shedding at short notice”.

“The system remains vulnerable to a number of variables due to historic factors such as inadequate maintenance as well as ageing of plants.”

The utility said 9,500MW of power was taken out of the grid due to the breakdowns, forcing it to use “emergency resources” – water and diesel – to meet demand.

This follows five days of load shedding in October due to outages at five power generating units.

At a media briefing last week, Minister of Public Enterprises Pravin
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Power outages cost SA millions of rands a day and could mean an economic downfall

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Ramaphosa may forget to go ahead with successful results whilst begging for investments when Eskom has already started shedding power, says a well-known economist from Pretoria.

Eskom’s load shedding, without any announcement, costs South Africa millions of rand a day, and the entity is in two ways destroying the country economically.

On the one hand, industries, business people, schools and government departments are all harmed by the load, while South Africans have to pay for power through their necks.

Secondly, the state treasury is being emptied to keep the incompetent power supplier standing, and the demand is growing that the ANC and the Eskom chiefs should all resign their offices because they are ruining the economy, he said.

Experts point out that it will now cost as much as R1.8 trillion to get the bankrupt Eskom back on a healthy footing, and no one will trust the Ramaphosa regime with such an amount, Bart Griffiths said.

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#RollingBlackouts are back due to a shortage of power generation at Eskom power stations contributed by lack of skill

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Eskom announced early on Wednesday that phase 2 load shedding will be activated from 09:00 to 23:00. The severe power constraints are apparently caused by a broken coal conveyor belt at the Medupi power station. This reduced the station’s power supply by half. The struggling power supplier said in a brief statement that due to a lack of generating capacity, he was forced to take this step.

According to Eskom, they have been extensively using the help of pump generators and open cycle gas turbines since Saturday to make up for the electricity shortage, but cannot sustain due to the decline in dam and diesel levels. In addition, five generating units are not available due to boiler tube leaks. As a result, the state entity then had to implement Phase 2 Load shedding from 9:00 am to 11:00 pm which dumps 2000 MW of power on a rotational basis to prevent a total collapse in the power grid. Phase 1 is the ‘lightest’ load shedding schedule, while up to 4,000 MW of power ca
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Eskom problems not solved yet – Possibility of load shedding exists in the coming months

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The DA said in a statement on Thursday that it had reliably heard that Eskom had issued a warning to municipalities about the “strong possibility of load shedding in September and October” this year.

Natasha Mazzone, DA’s shadow minister of public affairs,  said in the statement that the opposition party has now written to Eskom chairman Jabu Mabuza for transparency in order to clarify the matter.

“Eskom has continually failed in its mandate to provide reliable and sustained electricity supply and it appears as if millions of South Africans and the faltering economy will be abandoned by Eskom again,” says Mazzone.

According to the statement, each load-bearing phase is estimated to cost the country about R1 billion a day.

“Eskom has repeatedly plunged our country into deep trouble. South Africa cannot afford a repeat of the load shedding of the country earlier this year, ”says Mazzone.

The DA is of the opinion that the ANC also does not come up with
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Rolling Blackouts on the cards as AMCU threaten secondary strike , AMCU represents about half of coal mine workers in SA

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The tussle between Sibanye-Stillwater and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) has reached new heights.

The trade union, whose membership also includes coal mine workers, has teased a secondary strike and this could affect load shedding too.

Why is AMCU set to embark on a secondary strike?
AMCU president, Joseph Mathunjwa, made it abundantly clear that the upcoming strike has to be felt on a national scale. The plan is to render the entire country to a complete standstill.

This, according to Mathunjwa, is the only way to make the government — particularly the Minister of Mineral Resources, Gwede Mantashe — heed their calls for a moratorium at Sibanye-Stillwater.

Mantashe, on Thursday, revealed that his department would be engaging with the gold producer after it revealed its intentions to retrench more than 6 000 workers.

Mathunjwa expressed his disgust with this, criticising Mantashe of catering
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SA’s largest township owes Eskom R17 billion – Soweto residents respond: Hell no, we won’t pay for electricity!

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City Press visits Soweto and asks residents why they don’t pay for their electricity and how they could help Eskom to recoup the R17 billion owed by the people who live in SA’s largest township.

On Wednesday morning, as load shedding hit the township of 1.3 million residents, small businesses were losing money, and children had been sent home by their teachers, who said they couldn’t teach in a blackout.

While some people City Press spoke to paid their electricity bills and knew that their nonpaying neighbours were contributing to the crisis, others were steadfast in their refusal to pay for the power they used.

I pay because we have to

Sibongile Nyathi (40), who has been selling kota in Rockville for seven years, says she pays her electricity bills because, if she doesn’t, her small business will suffer.

“I can’t live without electricity, so it is important for me to pay. I am encouraging people of Soweto to also pay f
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BE WARNED SOUTH-AFRICANS!! After the load-shedding come water shortages – Still people will be voting for the ANC this coming election

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It’s not just load-shedding you have to worry about, the city of Johannesburg has warned. You could also be in for water cuts.

The metro warned that water shortages could follow load-shedding.

“As we continue to experience load-shedding across the country, Johannesburg Water is working alongside City Power to ensure that residents do not have to face water cuts as well,” said MMC for environment and infrastructure services Nico de Jager.

He says that when load-shedding of four or more hours is experienced, some areas could have water shortages or low water pressure.

“This is because Johannesburg Water uses electricity to pump water from the reservoirs into the towers,” he said.

Posted by Johannesburg Water on Thursday, February 14, 2019

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To start the new year ESKOM appointed new senior management staff, but is the load-shedding holiday over?

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Eskom intensified its plant maintenance and fast-tracked the recovery of stock levels from December 13 to January 13, when there was a low demand for electricity.

But Eskom’s energy availability factor for the year declined by 6.9% from 78.8% in 2017 to 71.9% in 2018, according to energy expert Chris Yelland. For the last week of December it reached a new low of 63%. The energy availability factor refers to the availability of Eskom’s plant fleet once they have taken into consideration planned maintenance and unplanned breakdowns.

Planned maintenance outages amounted to 15% of the outages in the third week of December and 18.4% in the last week, said Yelland.

Unplanned breakdown outages amounted to 19.5% and 17.5% of the fleet respectively.

Yelland said the high level of planned maintenance outages was expected because demand is low over the holiday period, allowing Eskom to do additional maintenance.

But, he said: “The leve
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Investors do not want to invest in SA since our national power provider is so unreliable – Communists now demand the end of load shedding after it has already cost the country billion Rand in recent weeks

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ANC, SAKP, Cosatu and Sanco are now demanding the end of load shedding in South Africa.

It is ironic that the people in charge of the country, that is, the ruling ANC party, its alliance partner, the SA Communist Party and unionists now demand that the shedding of power must be discontinued.

The ANC’s Zizi Kodwa issued a statement on behalf of the parties in which statecapture and corruption is blamed as well as Eskom’s incompetence to thrive. During the meeting of partners, the failure of local government was criticised as well as the inability to provide basic services.

In terms of power, the country has already spent billions of Rand in recent weeks, and Ramaphosa’s efforts to attract investors are being harmed by the power supply that is extremely unreliable.

Read the original article in Afrikaans on Die Vryburger
This report does not necessarily reflects the opinion of SA-news.

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