Implementing the recovery plan
Eskom has established a recovery task team around the supply
and demand side of the business, focusing on six major streams:
supply-side recovery; power buy-back; demand-side management
(DSM); public confidence building and communication;
employee morale and engagement; planning, risk and resilience
management.
The aim is to re-establish our ability to provide a secure power
supply by achieving a sustained reduction of 3 000MW over the
next four years. This sustained reduction, together with the new
capacity from the build programme, improved coal quality and
quantity and plant performance, will enable the reserve margin
to recover to about 15% between 2010 and 2012 and should
provide sufficient energy to cater for the expected economic
growth. We will need further interventions by 2012, when the
reserve margin is expected to drop to about 9%.
Supply-side recovery
The supply-side recovery team is working hard to return
coal stock to 20 days (refer here) and improve
the generation plant reliability and availability, so that
the UCLF (unplanned capability loss factor) and OCLF
(other capability loss factor) are consistently within the
reserve margin allowance (refer here).
Power buy-back and demand-market participation (DMP)
The power buy-back team needs to obtain a 2 000MW to
3 000MW demand reduction from energy-intensive customers
(furnace and smelting processes) and marginal producers. This is
in the feasibility phase.
The DMP programme allows customers to offer Eskom flexible
loads on a year-ahead or day-ahead basis, at a favourable
predetermined price. When Eskom is experiencing a load
shortage, we can first reduce or cut the load to these DMP
customers before having to consider other load shedding options.
The programme is approved by Nersa and has prevented load
shedding on many occasions over the past year. DMP savings of
67MW were contracted for 2008.
Demand-side management (DSM)
Demand-side management involves the installation of energyefficient and load-shifting technologies to alter the load profile
of Eskom. As such it is “hard wiring” savings into the system
thereby ensuring a higher level of security of supply in the short
to medium term.
There is a need to remove a certain amount of energy, measured
in GWh, from the system before 2012, when the supply side
options will assist in energy supply. This can be achieved by
co-generation, DSM and permanent behaviour change of
customers. As a result of this analysis, it is apparent that DSM
needs to be accelerated to achieve the required 10 000GWh
saving by 2011/12. This requires
3 800MW of energy saving
devices to be installed over the next four years. The main focus
will be on lighting (residential, commercial and industrial), solar
water heaters, smart meters and motor systems.
Mass rollout programmes will involve residential lighting, smart
meters and solar water heating. The latter two options will be
rolled out in the second half of 2009 and 2010.
In addition to these mass rollout programmes, smaller projects
are driven by independent energy services companies (ESCos).
These projects yield valuable MWh savings by large industries
and corporate customers. 2009 and 2010 will place a large
emphasis on energy-saving initiatives, mainly lighting, by using
these resources.
DSM implementation has been guided by Nersa, which includes
verifiable short-term DSM savings in its multi-year price
determination (MYPD) tariff setting process. Verified DSM savings
of 650,4MW (which includes DMP contracted savings of 67MW)
were achieved for the year against the Eskom target of 400MW
(2007: 169,8MW verified against the Eskom target of 213MW).
The mass rollout of compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) in early
2008 contributed 389,9MW to these savings.
Should the DSM initiatives not result in these energy savings, there
is an increased risk of load shedding from 2010 until the supply
side options are available. The success of the programme to
remove 10 000GWh out of the system by 2011/12, will depend
on the correct funding levels being available over the next four
years, regulatory support to ensure the correct projects can be
implemented, as well as to allow flexibility in the implementation
to ensure optimum deployment of DSM interventions.
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