Eskom clarifies its media briefing statement on rolling blackouts while the new Eskom board sets ambitious targets and hints at staff incentives to boost embattled power stations.
A few short hours after an “urgent media briefing”, Eskom backtracked somewhat hastily, saying some media headlines that screamed dire warnings of permanent rolling blackouts for two years were incorrect.
“Eskom has considered implementing permanent stage two and three load shedding to give the public more predictability. However, this is not possible as it would not guarantee that load shedding would remain at the lower levels,” spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshasha clarified on Sunday afternoon.
See more in Daily Maverick: “Ramaphosa’s ‘Energy Action Plan’ — how is it faring half a year later?”
The confusion from the press came in when Chairman of the Eskom board Mpho Makwana quite clearly said that the execution of the recovery plan relied on power stations being given the space to add additional capacity (and) do proper maintenance without firefighting, “.or create some predictability by implementing a permanent stage two or three (load shedding) for the next two years in order to give sufficient space for maintenance while giving the country a level of predictability or consistency to plan their livelihoods better. Shuttling from one stage to another within a short space of time is not good for the business community,” he said.
Makwana told journalists earlier in the day that the board had been in office for 110 days and had to hit the ground running, with more than 50 meetings of various board committees over 112 days.
“The generation recovery plan that was approved by the board on 10 December, has been stress tested. The plant performance recovery plan which is at the final stages of being approved by the shareholder will be driven vigorously and an external project management company will assist the board in stress testing and monitoring the execution of this recovery plan,” Makwana said.
Recovery in ‘at least two years’
However, he said that realistically, the recovery of the Eskom coal fleet could not be achieved in the short term. “It will take at least two years to improve the energy availability factor (EAF) from the current 58% to 70%. The journey of the turnaround will see a stretch target EAF being driven toward 60% by 31 March 2023, a mere 10 weeks away, then 65% EAF by 31 March 2024 and 70% by 31 March 2025,” he said.
Chris Yelland, an ...