Eskom has a plan, which, if successful, will secure an additional gigawatt (GW) of power to help reduce the effects of load shedding. It comes soon after plunging the country into darkness, also known as stage 6, on Sunday morning.
Getting its hands on a gigawatt of power won’t be easy. Eskom has three programmes in motion that, when combined, should secure the gigawatt it’s looking for.
Power levels over 1000 (MW)
One of the three programmes is focused on securing power from neighbouring countries. South Africa already has deals in place that bring in 200MW of power from surrounding countries, which is nowhere near enough.
“Several countries have expressed an interest in selling additional surplus power to South Africa. The programme will provide a mechanism to access such opportunities,” said the power provider.
Next, Eskom is turning to companies that have been generating power for longer than three years. This allows Eskom to purchase the company’s power at a calculated cost, taking as much energy as it practically can.
“The standard offer allows for a static price, which is established each year, based on the regulatory-approved cost recovery and covers the variable cost of generation. It also allows for a dynamic price option where the price is set the day ahead for each hour of the following day, indicating the avoided cost of generation based on internal scheduling of generators.”
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And finally, generators will become Eskom’s last hope. When the grid is constrained (so, always), it’ll run generators to make up for the loss of missing units. Eskom is on a search for independent generators, costing the company based on generator availability and reliability.
“Over time, the threshold will be lowered to enable smaller producers to participate,” it said. “The combined impact of the programmes, predicted to exceed 1GW, will make an important contribution towards reducing the load shedding burden on consumers.”
And when will these plans be put into motion? If all goes according to plan, we should notice a difference as soon as this week. Eskom’s mindset is to get electricity to “start flowing through the grid as soon as possible”.
Source: TechCentral