Eskom reassured electricity customers yesterday that it had a fall-back plan to keep the lights on this winter, even as it anticipated record peak demand last night during one of the coldest spells this year.
The power utility predicted peak demand would touch 36 000 megawatts last night after breaking through 35 000MW the night before due to higher household electricity consumption in the cold weather.
The SA Weather Service forecast temperatures would plunge below zero in several inland towns today.
“It’s a tight week,” said Eskom spokeswoman Hilary Joffe, indicating that peak demand would nevertheless be short of Eskom’s 2011 mid-winter forecast of 37 500MW. She estimated the utility’s generating capacity at 42 000MW.
Eskom has developed a multi-pronged plan to avoid a repeat of the unexpected blackouts that forced mines and smelters to close for days in 2008 and resulted thereafter in load shedding, or rolling blackouts to avert grid overload.
Since then, Eskom has added 1 000MW of generating capacity from gas turbines, but diesel costs render this option a last resort. The return to service of three decommissioned coal-fired power stations has also created additional generating capacity of 4 000MW, most of it since 2008.
An additional 373MW of cogeneration (electricity made from industrial processes) has been secured from independent power producers including Sasol, Sappi and Ipsa. Another 260MW has been added in short-term municipal deals with the Kelvin and Rooiwal power units.
However, the utility is short of 600MW after an unexplained outage at the Duvha power station, which is expected to remain off-line this year.
Demand for electricity has surged back to levels before the 2008 financial crisis, growing 4 percent in 2010 and 1.5 percent in the first quarter of the year compared with 2010. Eskom expected demand growth of 2 percent for the full year, Joffe said.
She said most of Eskom’s 140 largest industrial customers had agreed to participate in a voluntary energy conservation programme in terms of which Eskom had invested almost R1 billion to support energy efficiency measures. Eskom has been given R5.4bn over three years by the energy regulator to upgrade customers’ equipment.
Among the big customers, some had cut electricity consumption 10 percent from a 2007 baseline and simultaneously raised output, Joffe said. Overall, the voluntary programme had achieved savings of about 5 percent, she said.
Chemicals group AECI said yesterday that it had made good progress in cutting consumption since the 2008 electricity crisis, estimating it was “more than halfway” towards achieving savings of 10 percent.
A planned outage “would not be nice”, but would be manageable, said spokeswoman Fulvia Putero. San Fibres, AECI’s former synthetic fibres subsidiary, was hit by the 2008 blackouts after polymer materials solidified in the production system.
Diamond mining group De Beers said yesterday it had signed up to Eskom’s NRS048 process, an emergency protocol that kicks in should Eskom exhaust all its lines of defence against load shedding.
“One modifies production to cater for the planned shedding, having received a few hours warning for a set demand time period, which helps… avoid unexpected shutdowns,” said De Beers spokesman Tom Tweedy.
Eskom expects the demand-supply balance to remain under pressure until the first unit of the Medupi coal-fired power station comes on line next year. - Business Report