S.Africa: Electricity problems: Eskom runs out of diesel

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Eskom says it doesn’t have diesel to run its open-cycle gas turbine power plants, which form part of its emergency power generation fleet.

“Changes in the stages of load-shedding will be more erratic due to the absence of the buffer that is normally provided by the diesel generation capacity between generating unit breakdowns,” the power utility said on Friday.

“The implementation of load-shedding will be maintained at stage 4 until further notice.”

Eskom said it needed to implement stage 4 mainly due to the high level of breakdowns and the depleted emergency generation reserves.

“Since Friday morning, a generating unit each at Kendal and Kriel power stations were taken offline for repairs,” Eskom said.

“Delays in returning to service a unit each at Arnot, Grootvlei, Hendrina and Tutuka power stations have contributed to the capacity constraints.”

Eskom said a generating unit each at Camden, Kriel, Tutuka, and two units at Majuba power stations were returned to service.

“We currently have 4,887MW on planned maintenance, while another 15,320MW of capacity is unavailable due to breakdowns.”

Eskom said it would publish a further update as soon as significant changes occur.

During its State of the System briefing on Tuesday, Eskom said it was undertaking major capital projects and repairs.

As a result, it warned that South Africans should expect prolonged load-shedding over the next six to 12 months.

Eskom said the projects and repairs would remove over 2,300MW of generating capacity from the system. One stage of load-shedding is roughly 1,000MW.

The state-owned power utility said that high breakdown levels caused it to rely heavily on dam water and diesel energy reserves at its pumped storage schemes and open-cycle gas turbines.

Eskom also said the collapse of the flue-gas duct leading out of Kusile power station’s Unit 1 had dealt a severe blow to the utility’s efforts to improve the generation capacity.

The collapse has not only meant Unit 1 needed to be shut down. Eskom has delayed the return to service of Unit 2 and Unit 3 as a precaution.

Unit 4 is the only one currently on load at Kusile, Eskom said.

Eskom COO Jan Oberholzer said their current estimates showed it would take no less than six months to fix Kusile’s flue-gas duct.

Source: https://mybroadband.co.za/news/energy/469771-eskom-runs-out-of-diesel.html

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