Lack of maintenance has led to under-performance at some power plants, says Ramokgopa
Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said that the historical abandonment of maintenance on electrical infrastructure has resulted in the underperformance of some power stations today.
In his weekly update, Ramokgopa provided an update on the state of the national grid, along with updates on the energy action plan.
On Sunday, he shared insight into the performance of every power station in the country.
He said that Eskom had noted that it was losing hundreds of thousands of megawatts that could be adding capacity to the grid because some units had not been maintained consistently.
“Significant amount of opportunity there at Kriel. As I’m speaking to you, it’s giving an EAF of 40% and we know we can do significantly better because those units are big units and that 40%, it’s an injustice on what the team is capable of achieving.”
He said that the historical backlog of maintenance had caused serious issues.
“Part of the underperformance you’re seeing here it’s a function of historic reasons. Historic in this instance I’m referring to is Eskom’s inability to invest in the maintenance, and the R254 billion fiscal injection that has been extended to Eskom is to invest that money into these power stations.”
The electricity minister said that Eskom was initiating interventions at low-performing power stations.
He said that the underperformance of some of its power station units was costing the country more than expected.
These included the Kriel, Kusile, and Tutuka units.
“We need to understand which power stations are dragging us down. For us, we are making that point where we are initiating the interventions to work with the teams there. And they know we have given them our stamp of approval, we are working with them to ensure that we are going to improve the performance of these power stations.”
Ramokgopa said that there were some licensing requirements delaying the return of some units.
“The more we initiate other efforts to address the issues on the emissions side so that we don’t exceed the emissions licensing parameters, the more we’re able to run these units.”
-EWN
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