As Eskom bosses came armed with a list of excuses why the country has been plunged into a power crisis on Tuesday, workers at some of the utility’s power stations painted a picture of chaos and breakdowns at its plants, leading to rolling blackouts.
Employees at least four coal-fired power stations in Mpumalanga told Sowetan about a litany of problems besieging the plants, including poor quality coal, ageing units, tube leaks, broken coal conveyor belts and damaged parts that could not be replaced quicker.
Eskom chief operations officer Jan Oberholzer blamed the crisis partly on the procurement processes and that they had settled to use some contractors who were not necessarily qualified to conduct maintenance for Eskom.
He said previously, contractors who were the cheapest and showed they could do the job were appointed.
Speaking during a media briefing outlining the challenges, Oberholzer said they were not happy with all contractors appointed by the power utility.
“It’s not only challenges of contractors but spare parts to install and give us maintenance are also giving us challenges and we’re discussing that with Treasury and how the PMFA (Public Finance Management Act) applies to Eskom,” Oberholzer said.
At the Kusile power station near eMalahleni, one of SA's newest power stations has been operating with two generating units after one had to be taken out due to what's called a subscriber conveyor problem about three weeks ago.
A subscriber conveyor removes coal ash from a generating unit after burning coal.
Workers at the R160bn station complained that the plant was suffering way too many breakdowns for a new station which is yet to be fully completed.
“This station is new but looks and feels old, for example its mills cannot automatically reject poor coal, that has to be done manually,” said an employee who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Another employee said often, there were no spare parts when damages were discovered due to poor planning.
“Like now, unit 2 is out and if any of the two remaining unit could have issues and a part needs to be replaced, it would be removed from unit 2 because there's just no spares available,” the employee said.
At the Hendrina power station near Middelburg, only two of the six operational generating units were working on Tuesday, according employees.
Workers complained of the problem of poor coal making it past Eskom processes into the station, often damaging the power generating units leading to boiler leaks.
For more than a week now two power generating units were out due to tube leaks while another unit was out as it awaits a fan motor replacement, according to workers.
Only one unit at Hendrina is out due to scheduled maintenance, workers said.
“We have one of the units which recently returned from maintenance breaking down three times, even now we expect it to break down anytime because it's been problematic,” said another employee.
At Duvha power station in eMalahleni, only three of the five functional units were operational, with the other two out due to scheduled maintenance and generator problems.
A worker at Duvha said they encounter regular breakdowns “due to the ageing plant we have”.
At Arnot near Middelburg, a unit also broke down this week while three other units at Kendal in Ogies broke down last week, leaving the station operating at half its capacity. An employee at Kendal said: “For the fact that three units are out for a week now due to an electrical fault on the conveyor belt shows that those doing maintenance on the plants don't have the requisite skill and knowledge.”
Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter said procurement proposals could take as long as 77 days with national Treasury which has delayed work being done by Eskom in appointing contractors and getting them on site for maintenance.
“... A particular challenge is to expedite critical spares with OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] to ensure we maintain our equipment with the spares required,” De Ruyter said. “Another reliable power station had an excessive vacuum losses on challenges with critical spares such as cooling fans and proved difficult to obtain.”
De Ruyter said the current round of power cuts would end on Saturday at 5am, however “the risk of loadshedding will remain” until additional 4,000MW to 6,000MW capacity is added to the grid.
Despite the obvious failures, Oberholzer said Eskom’s system was “the best” in the world. “We will protect [our system] even if we take loadshedding higher than stage 4 level,” said Oberholzer.
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