Addressing the Africa Renewables Investment Summit (ARIS), underway here in Cape Town Eskom’s CEO André de Ruyter warned that power cuts can get worse than the suggested load shedding Stages 7 and 8 (more than 12 hours a day for millions of South Africans). Addressing the current electricity crisis de Ruyter said “Stage 15 load shedding. I don’t want to know what that looks like,” according to The South African.
The CEO suggested that in order to keep a consistent power supply, the country needs to invest in renewable energy and relax air quality standards.
This can be costly resulting in high electricity tariffs which is a necessary move because coal power stations in use currently do not meet minimum emission standards.
De Ruyter mentioned that Eskom is left with just two options to either spend about R300 billion to retrofit the power stations with equipment to clean their emissions or shut them down.
The worst that could happen is a grid collapse; it would lead to no electricity for weeks. Should Eskom be allowed to continue operating its existing coal fleet without meeting strict new environmental rules, plants would still need to be decommissioned when they reach end-of-life. The state-owned power utility’s power stations are old, and for some of them, that day will be in the next 15 years.
Building replacement coal-fired or nuclear power stations that meet these requirements would be expensive, and lead times on such projects are years long.
Energy experts have said it could take 10–12 years to build new traditional power stations. Construction on the Medupi and Kusile coal-fired power stations began in 2007 — 15 years ago — and they are still not finished.
Although new power stations could be part of South Africa’s plans to meet its future energy needs, the country’s focus must be on alleviating load-shedding in the short term.
De Ruyter said Eskom’s solution is to support the rollout of renewable power generation in South Africa. This includes an initiative to lease land near its power stations in Mpumalanga to independent renewable power producers.
When it announced the plan in December 2021, Eskom said bids for government’s renewable power procurement programme showed that renewable energy is the least-cost option for new generating capacity.
Source: jacarandafm
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