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Opinion


FOCUS ON IMPROVING THE ENERGY AVAILABILITY FACTOR AS A QUICK WIN TO STOP
LOAD-SHEDDING



Zwanani Titus Mathe
16 Jan 2023
There is no doubt that the future of electricity generation will be largely
renewable energy and possibly nuclear energy. Photo: Supplied
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There is no doubt that the future of electricity generation will be largely
renewable energy and possibly nuclear energy. But in the short to medium term
the South African electricity grid will be largely powered by coal-based
electricity generation. The Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) of 2019 captures the
roadmap and policy direction adopted by South Africa. A lot has changed since
2019, and hence the IRP 2019 is being reviewed. 



It was assumed that the Eskom fleet energy availability factor (EAF) would be
maintained above 70% whereas today it is consistently below 60%. Renewable
energy costs have come down substantially, but there is a need to consider the
cost of introducing large energy storage systems to support grid stability and
make up for the performance of intermittent/variable renewable energy. 

In addition, future updates of the IRP would have to take into account the
changing characteristics of the power system, mainly because of the introduction
of renewable energy and energy storage systems. Besides modelling for EAF and
power generation in megawatts (MW), the issues of power system grid stability
and the location of new plants would have to be taken into account. 

Getting the IRP 2019 reviewed, consulted and approved will take time. Meanwhile,
urgent steps need to be taken to address the load-shedding and baseload crisis.
Some have argued that South Africa has enough capacity to cater for the current
demand (and that is true when considering Eskom’s installed nominal capacity)
but the low EAF evidently shows that even with sufficient installed capacity,
the security of supply is threatened if plant performance is poor.

According to the latest system update report from Eskom, the electricity grid
has about 55.4 gigawatts of installed electricity supply capacity, excluding
demand side products or instruments. This is broken down as follows:


 * Dispatchable capacity (including imports and emergency generation resources):
   49.2GW
 * Solar photovoltaic (non-dispatchable): 2.3GW
 * Concentrated solar power (non-dispatchable): 0.5GW
 * Wind (non-dispatchable): 3.4GW

The highest peak demand in 2022 was 31.8GW which was recorded on 2 June 2022.
For the rest of the year, the peak demand ranged between 23GW and 26GW.
Therefore, the electricity system has enough installed capacity to cater for the
demand, operating reserves and maintenance (planned and unplanned outages). So
the big question is what has happened, from a technical point of view, that led
to frequent load-shedding in 2022 as depicted in Figure 1 below? What is behind
the sharp increase in unplanned capacity loss factor (UCLF) and the drastic drop
in EAF as depicted in Figure 2 below? 

Figure 1: Loadshedding statistics from January 2015 to December 2022 (Source:
EskomSePush)

Figure 2: Technical performance of Eskom Generation fleet from FY 2007/8 to FY
2022/23 (Data source: Eskom)

The assumptions and projections for energy availability factor as the IRP bear
reference (see Table 1 below). It was projected that EAF will be at 73.5% in
2022. Surprisingly the actual EAF as of December 2022 was 58% (per the Eskom
Weekly System Status Report 2022, week 52). It is acknowledged that Eskom has
had a number of non-technical problems over the last 10 years or so, including
allegations of corruption and criminal activities. But there are technical
issues that must have contributed to this sudden drop in EAF and these are
unpacked below.

Table 1: Projected Eskom Plant Energy Availability Factor (IRP 2019)



STATION202020212022ACACIA98.4098.3982.34ANKERLIG98.1294.2098.13GOURIKWA95.8894.0397.70PORT
REX97.7193.0792.46GARIEP98.7795.9689.94VANDERKLOOF94.7398.8788.95DRAKENSBERG75.3684.7281.29INGULA93.2898.9294.37PALMIET86.0598.8394.45PEAKING91.7994.9492.47KOEBERG84.1682.9670.32NUCLEAR84.1682.9670.32ARNOT65.0862.4465.36DUVHA54.4849.6760.16HENDRINA60.9355.9669.35KENDAL69.1071.3465.47KRIEL54.1063.4254.63LETHABO73.9872.3875.61MAJUBA73.0574.6275.32MATIMBA82.7580.1481.64MATLA67.3068.7670.74TUTUKA56.0656.8654.05BIG
1066.7867.1867.69CAMDEN60.0055.8161.24GROOTVLEI89.15KOMATI87.39TOTAL
RTS63.2155.8161.24CURRENT FLEET
TOTAL71.0071.5371.40KUSILE72.0076.5583.72MEDUPI76.6479.2384.22NEW
BUILD75.3178.2984.00ESKOM TOTAL71.572.5073.50

What happened in the recent past?

To understand what has happened in the recent past, one has to look at the
energy availability factor trend since 2008, when load-shedding started (see
Table 2 below and Figure 2 above).

Table 2: Technical performance of Generation fleet (source: Eskom Audited Annual
Reports and System Status Report for Week 52; Note FY22/23 is from Jan 2022 to
Dec 2022)

The above table clearly demonstrates that the problem of increase in plant
breakdowns started in about  2013, indicated by a sudden increase of unplanned
capacity loss factor from 7.97% in 2012 to 12.12% in 2013. The UCLF worsened in
2014 and 2015, with figures of 12.61% and 15.22%, respectively. To address this
negative trend in UCLF, it appears that the planned capability loss factor
(PCLF) was ramped up in 2016 and 2017, as can be seen from the figures of 12.99%
and 12.14%, respectively. The result of this increase in PCLF was observed in
the drop of UCLF in 2017 to 9.9% from the previous high UCLF observed in 2013
(12.12%), 2014 (12.61%), 2015 (15.22%) and 2016 (14.91%). 

Unfortunately, the high PCLF was not maintained in 2018, 2019 and 2020. It is
only in 2021 that the PCLF starts to increase to 12.26% (perhaps as a reaction
to the catastrophic worsening of unplanned capacity loss factor to nearly 23% in
the financial year 2019-20). For the year 2022, the PCLF was again dropped to
10.23. UCLF averaged about 25.35% for 2022. For the current financial year,
2022-23 the EAF is at 58% and UCLF at 29.82, which is the worst performance in
the history of Eskom. 



The reduction in the planned capability loss factor is the root cause of the
current challenges Eskom is facing today regarding load-shedding. It is common
knowledge that when you are operating an old fleet, maintenance is typically
higher than when operating a relatively new fleet of assets. It is puzzling how
Eskom got this wrong.

Furthermore, it would also appear that the effectiveness of the maintenance that
is being done is not great. This is an observation borne by the fact that the
planned capability loss factor  bump of 12.26% has had no effect in even
arresting (let alone reversing the trend) in the unplanned capacity loss factor
deterioration seen in subsequent years. 

This seems to indicate that we have officially arrived at that place known as
being between a rock and a hard place. This seems to suggest that plant
condition has deteriorated so badly that it will require a step change in
planned capability loss factor (removing a substantial amount of capacity for
maintenance) for quite some time to catch up with all the maintenance required
to restore plant condition to a relatively good state. This will also require
painstaking attention to the quality and priorities of the maintenance.

As a result of inadequate plant maintenance, Generation is also now incurring a
daily average of about 5 000 megawatts to 7 000MW of partial load losses. Common
problematic plant areas across the fleet include the following: milling plant
because of poor coal quality; gas cleaning; draught group; poor condensing
caused by poor vacuum (hot air in summer and cooling water system blockages in
condensing pipelines that has negatively affected effective heat transfer and
cooling water temperatures); air heaters and high stack emissions. 

In addition, station demineralised water chemistry consumption is above target
because of plant leaks. High demineralised water consumption places an
unsustainable burden on the water treatment plant to produce sufficient
demineralised water to satisfy the station demand, resulting in chemical
excursions (and further knock-on effects of plant deterioration). 

Furthermore, again because of inadequate maintenance of the plant, emissions
performance has deteriorated. Load is sometimes curtailed to ensure that minimum
emissions standard (MES) limits are met or not substantially exceeded. This
requires the plant to be operated under abnormal conditions or reduced load,
which sometimes requires manual operating interventions. As a result dust and
ash handling plants experience problems associated with hoppers not being
emptied timeously and abatement control plants being damaged. This mode of
operation also results in fabric filter plant systems (FFPS) and electrostatic
precipitators (ESPs) facing issues of blinding of fabric filter plant (FFP)
bags, and contamination of the ESP fields caused by fuel oil/unburnt carbon
carryover.

About half of these partial load losses can be cleared online or during weekend
maintenance opportunities, provided spares and contracts are in place. The rest
(about 3 000MW) require extended outages to clear or plant modifications. With
increased focus and commitment, it is possible to lower partial load losses to
be consistently below 5 000MW within six months, and thereafter to be
consistently below 4 000MW within 12 months. This focus and commitment is
currently a problem and most stations’ resources are consumed with keeping the
units running. To ensure a drastic reduction of partial load losses, a different
approach is required. Attending to partial load losses at the coal face is
required, as opposed to tracking and reporting.

Of course, there are other contributory factors that must also be considered,
such as leadership that may not be equal to the task, exodus of technical
skills, corruption, criminal activities at the power stations, coal quality
issues and staff morale.

Urgent steps to be taken

The following nine urgent steps are proposed:

 * The President immediately declare a National State of Disaster for
   electricity supply empowering Eskom and the government to take extraordinary
   measures to stop load-shedding. This may include quick procurement of
   critical spares from around the world. The state of disaster would also
   enable the mobilisation of support from other power utilities around the
   world. A National Electricity Supply Command Council to be set up to provide
   oversight.
 * Eskom executive committee to urgently approve and release a maintenance
   budget per power station for the next five years. This maintenance budget
   must be aligned with a high PCLF (15%, but preferably much more). To
   accommodate this high PCLF, load-shedding at about stage 3 level, may have to
   be implemented for up to 12 months. This is to allow for units to be taken
   off the system for general overhaul and much-needed refurbishments. This
   approach will require an agile procurement process to allow for quick
   procurement of critical spares and maintenance crew. What is untenable, at
   this stage, is for the country to be subjected to severe load shedding that
   goes on without addressing (or even allowing a worsening of) the underlying
   root causes of capacity shortage, just to manage from one crisis to the next.
 * Outsource maintenance to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) using
   risk-benefit type of long-term contracts (minimum 10 years). This must be
   accompanied by proper scoping of the outages, making sure critical spares are
   available before breaking open, and ensuring an acceptable quality of
   workmanship during an outage. The OEMs to be held accountable for outage
   slips and unit performance beyond the outage. If the outage slips or unit
   trips occur after returning from an outage or a unit breaks down due to poor
   workmanship post-outage, the OEM must face economic penalties for each hour
   of downtime or load loss. Having a well-defined system of holding OEMs
   accountable for plant performance, and the consequences that go with it, will
   compel the OEMs to have the right skills in place and ensure high quality of
   workmanship. By the same token, if the unit performs well after an outage,
   the OEM and staff must be rewarded.
 * Establish site-based recovery teams for plant maintenance oversight (made up
   of Eskom specialists and independent specialist engineering companies),
   reporting directly to the power station manager. The site-based maintenance
   recovery teams must be empowered to make decisions without having to write
   endless memorandums and motivations to head office managers and committees.
   The manager must be the final decision-maker during this recovery. As a
   minimum, the scope of work for the site-based recovery teams should entail
   driving maintenance (be it on breakdowns and/or planned) quality control and
   engineering assurance, ensuring correct spares are specified and procured,
   and ensuring outage scopes are correct. These site-based teams must also
   provide technical support to the buyers of equipment; ideally, buyers must be
   engineers or technicians trained in procurement processes and governance.
   Priority power stations (which are large and complex) for these site-based
   teams should be the following:
   * Kusile (50-year life; shutdown estimated to be by 2073)
   * Medupi (50-year life; shutdown by 2071)
   * Majuba (50-year life; shutdown by 2050)
   * Kendal (50-year life; shutdown by 2043)
   * Matimba (50-year life; shutdown by 2041)
   * Lethabo (50-year life; shutdown by 2040)
   * Tutuka (50-year life; shutdown by 2040)
   * Duvha (50-year life; shutdown by 2034)
   * Matla (50-year life; shutdown by 2033)
   * Kriel (50-year life; shutdown by 2029)
   * Arnot (50-year life; shutdown by 2029)
 * Establish site-based partial load losses recovery teams (made up of Eskom
   specialists and Independent specialist engineering companies), reporting
   directly to the power station manager. The site-based teams must, similarly,
   be empowered to make decisions without having to write endless memorandums
   and motivations to head office managers and committees. Themanager must be
   the final decision-maker during this recovery. As a minimum, the scope of
   work for the site-based recovery teams should cover implementing
   interventions to reduce partial load losses, process engineering and
   trouble-shooting, conducting in-depth investigations and analysis of unit
   trips, proactive identification and technical management of single point of
   failures, handling security technical matters and providing primary energy
   oversight (coal quality, diesel management and accounting, fuel oil
   management and accounting). Priority power stations for these teams would be
   the same as those mentioned for the maintenance recovery and oversight teams.
 * Establish site-based recovery teams for environmental compliance and minimum
   emissions standard (MES) upgrades (made up of Eskom specialists, independent
   specialist engineering companies and original equipment manufacturers),
   reporting directly to the power station manager. The site-based teams must be
   empowered to make decisions without having to write endless memorandums and
   motivations to head office managers and committees. The manager must be the
   final decision-maker during this recovery. Some of the technologies to be
   considered were highlighted in the opinion piece published by Mail & Guardian
   recently, headlined “Practical Steps to stop load-shedding”. These include
   retrofitting emissions abatement technologies for sulphur removal, nitrogen
   oxide (NOx) reduction, and particulate removal. Deployment (through public
   private partnerships) of clean coal technologies such as the use of green
   ammonia (produced from green hydrogen and nitrogen) for removal of sulphur
   from coal combustion flue gas, producing ammonium sulphate fertiliser as a
   saleable by-product. Profits from selling ammonium sulphate could then be
   used to fund the retrofits of low NOx burners and the proven high-frequency
   power transformers for the removal of particulates. The existing
   electrostatic precipitators and dust handling plants must be upgraded
   accordingly.
 * Mass recruitment of technical skills (including learners, artisans,
   technicians, engineers and highly-experienced specialists). This recruitment
   process must be site driven, with the final decision-maker (on the numbers
   and mix of required skills) being the power station manager. Headhunting and
   external recruitment to be part of the recruitment strategies employed at the
   site, without needing approval from head office.
 * Use of local universities and universities of technology to conduct
   investigations. Outcomes and recommendations from these investigations must
   be practical and implementable. This must be done under the guidance of Eskom
   Research, Testing and Development (RT&D). In fact, RT&D needs to function as
   a world-class research organisation that earns its living from implementable
   solutions that make a difference in the performance of Eskom’s plants and
   infrastructure (almost similar to earning revenue from licencing solutions
   and patent royalties). Technical training must be rolled-out per power
   station and accredit system engineers, technicians, plant managers, artisans,
   operators and so forth.
 * Reinstate incentive scheme for staff, irrespective of the financial position
   of the organisation. Without a motivated workforce, no plan will work. This
   intervention is crucial to get buy-in from Eskom guardians, especially
   organised labour. Having a proper performance management system, that is
   aligned with the strategic direction of the organisation and key performance
   indicators, will help.
 * Daily updates provided through the Eskom spokesperson regarding progress to
   stop load-shedding. Daily updates to be structured as follows:
   * Immediate steps (which is basically covered in this opinion piece)
   * Short-term interventions
   * Medium-term interventions
   * Long-term interventions

One of the main factors contributing to the root causes of a sudden increase in
load-shedding is not sustaining maintenance for the old fleet, particularly from
2018 to 2020. There was an attempt to increase PCLF in 2021, and again this was
not sustained in 2022. It is therefore not surprising that the breakdowns seem
to have breached the roof in 2022. It is pleasing to see that Eskom increased
maintenance during December 2022, notably PCLF reaching the highest ever in Week
52 at 16%. These high levels of PCLF must be maintained at this level and more
for at least the next six months or so. Other measures and interventions as
articulated in this opinion piece must be implemented immediately to ensure
sustained improvement in technical plant performance, most likely to be realised
toward the end of 2023. Unfortunately, the situation will get worse before
getting better. It is important to protect the grid stability during the next
six months. If the issue of grid stability is not taken seriously, then perhaps
it is time to start planning for the worst-case scenario –– a complete blackout.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian.


Zwanani Titus Mathe
Dr Zwanani Titus Mathe, PrEng, is the chief executive of the South African
National Energy Development Institute, established in 2011 to direct, monitor
and conduct energy research and development, promote energy research and
technology innovation as well as undertake measures to promote energy efficiency
throughout the economy.

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