Cape Town - Embattled power utility Eskom says diesel deliveries have started at PetroSA’s facility in Mossel Bay, with the delivery vessel having berthed on Thursday.
Transferring the fuel to the Gourikwa and Ankerlig Open Cycle Gas Turbine stations will take place throughout the weekend, to replenish supplies by Monday, Eskom said.
The parastatal said it would also use the weekend to replenish the dam levels at the pumped storage schemes which have been utilised extensively to complement generation capacity.
“It is anticipated the first unit of the Camden Power Station will return to service during the weekend, with the remaining returning over the course of the following ten days.
“This requires the implementation of Stage 4 load shedding to be maintained until 5am on Saturday.
Load shedding will then be reduced to Stage 3 until 5am on Monday. Eskom will publish a further update on Sunday afternoon, or as soon as there are any significant changes,” Eskom said.
In addition to all the eight Camden Power Station units that were taken offline due to de-mineralised water contamination Wednesday night as a result of the incorrect valve being opened, a generating unit at Kriel Power Station was also taken offline for repairs.
“We currently have 5 206MW on planned maintenance, while another 15 862MW of capacity is unavailable due to breakdowns.”
Meanwhile during a briefing on Thursday, the Koeberg Alert Alliance raised concern about the escalating costs of refurbishing the nuclear power plant.
Koeberg operates under a licence from the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) which expires in July 2024.
In 2010 the Eskom Board approved spending R20bn on refurbishing Koeberg to extend its life by 20 years.
“Currently Koeberg provides 3.5% of national nominal generating capacity, although over the past few years it has been plagued by problems. For most of 2022, unit 2 has been offline and the plant has run at half of its nominal capacity.
“Until the presentation to parliament on September 27, Eskom maintained that the refurbishment would still cost R20bn. This made no sense, as the exchange rate in 2010 was R7.50 to the US dollar. Using the exchange rate on September 28 2022 of R18.00 to the US dollar this is equivalent to R65.3bn.”
The KAA said adding up the costs for the outages and the conservative R67.9 billion in direct costs, the total cost to the Koeberg refurbishment would be R281bn. “If all the figures are taken into account, in terms of cost to the country, if the refurbishment of Koeberg goes ahead it will produce the most expensive electricity in the history of South Africa,” the KAA said.
Eskom did not respond to the KAA’s claims by deadline.
Cape Times