Eskom has been given a major lifeline

Pravin Gordhan, the minister of public enterprises, says his department has found 50 million litres of diesel for the national power utility Eskom from state-owned PetroSA.

Responding to questions in the National Assembly plenary, Gordhan stated that his department has been liaising with Eskom and PetroSA this week to find a way – within the limited resources the power utility currently has – to make diesel available to Eskom immediately.

“By the evening and this morning, 50 million litres of diesel have been found, have been provided by PetroSA. Some of those litres travel by pipeline, some by truck.”

Diesel is required to power Eskom’s open-cycle gas turbines, which generate electricity during peak demand periods across the country. The turbines can handle approximately two stages of load shedding.

Despite being designed solely for peaks when regular coal-powered stations are unable to meet demand, South Africa has become reliant on diesel-fueled systems to avoid higher levels of load shedding.

Gordhan has also met with Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana to discuss a more long-term solution to the problem of low diesel reserves.

“We have taken steps to find funding. Firstly, as a matter of urgency, the Minister of Finance and I talked on Sunday evening about where money could be found. Secondly, there was a meeting between my delegation and the Minister of Finance’s delegation about the challenges Eskom faced,” he said.

Gordhan stated that a number of plans were developed earlier this year to ensure that generation is more stable earlier – but clearly, not enough has been done.

Eskom no longer has funds to purchase diesel. According to Jan Oberholzer, Eskom’s chief operating officer, Eskom has spent more than R11.2 billion on diesel this year through the end of October.

The cost of the 50 million litres of diesel sent to Eskom was not disclosed by Gordhan or PetroSA.

Professor Anton Eberhard, an energy expert, has warned that if diesel is not used to power open-cycle gas turbines, system failures will increase.

According to the director of the Power Futures Lab at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business, Eskom cannot respond to emergencies without these turbines, increasing the risk of system collapse.

“At a time of intermittent and declining coal plant output, it increases the risk of more load-shedding and system failure,” he said.

South Africa’s load shedding has reached record lows, with ordinary South Africans bearing the brunt of it. This has slowed the country’s economic growth and brought daily operations to a halt.

The outlook for the foreseeable future appears bleak, with the national utility’s best-case scenario in its 12-month outlook predicting seven days of load shedding during the coming summer period, but only if it can spend billions of rands on diesel and keep breakdowns below 13,000MW.