Eskom aims to downgrade to stage 4 blackouts before the weekend

Eskom says it will have a reliable amount of diesel supplies going forward thanks to loan guarantees from National Treasury.

Eskom uses diesel to power turbines that are used as a back-up to its coal fired power stations – most of which are aging and require constant maintenance.

The embattled power utility says the electricity system remains highly constrained and unreliable after breakdowns at multiple generating units which have prompted stage six load shedding.

Eskom says it hopes to reduce loadshedding to stage four by Thursday.

Outgoing CEO Andre de Ruyter says, “We have obtained the support of National Treasury to give assurance to the banks from whom we are borrowing money to buy the diesel that National Treasury will stand behind these loans. That has given us the ability to ease the liquidity constraint and then we can continue to purchase the requisite diesel to maintain the supply to our open cycle gas turbines.”

Meanwhile, De Ruyter said on Monday, during a state of the grid briefing, that the open cycle gas turbines are currently being run hard, which is why stage six load shedding is required.

He also shared some of the challenges that lead to rolling blackouts.

“The balance of our fleet is old, it is unreliable, and consequently, when we then have incidents like we had at Lethabo, where we lost two units due to coal constraints, and then a further unit due to a boiler tube leak, then the shortfall in generation capacity becomes very urgent indeed. Now, we are intending to return some units to service, we are looking at Lethabo, unit four, five, and two, those are the three units that are out, and also a unit at Camdon.”

VIDEO | Eskom briefs the media on system challenges: