Load-shedding makes unwelcome return

Mbongeni Mguni | Friday June 13, 2014 15:51

 

 

 Last night, parts of the country were swathed in darkness as load-shedding bounced back after months of absence, forcing some football lovers to miss the opening match of the 2014 World Cup.

In the afternoon, South African power utility, Eskom, sounded warning bells for Botswana by declaring a “supply emergency” which it said was caused by high winter demand unmatched by supply.  “The power system is currently severely constrained, meaning that any extra load or faults in the system are likely to result in load shedding,” the utility said in a statement.

“Yesterday (Wednesday) Eskom had to reduce electricity demand between 1800hrs and 2000hrs in order to balance the electricity system.

“The system remains under significant strain again this evening (Thursday) from 1700hrs to 2100hrs with a probability of load shedding.”

Eskom, which supplies Botswana with up to 300MW of power or over half of peak demand, has said it will cut supplies off completely when it is forced to shed load in South Africa.

 In March, the South African giant cut its supplies to Botswana down to zero, giving the BPC mere minutes of warning, as available generation plummeted in that country due to wet coal stockpiles. BPC marketing and communications manager, Spencer Moreri, told Mmegi that load shedding was unavoidable starting from yesterday evening, with the duration and intensity inestimable.

“We have three units operational at Morupule B with the fourth expected by the end of the month, as we had promised,” he said.

“We had managed to avoid load shedding over the two recent peak annual periods when demand rose beyond 590MW.

“However, with the situation in South Africa, we expect load shedding here to take place during peak evening hours which occur between 1800hrs and 2200hrs.” Moreri explained that if the supply deficit within these peak periods is under 50MW, the BPC would revert to its published load shedding schedule. However, any shortfalls beyond that would necessitate deeper, sporadic load shedding, covering wider areas for longer.

The three operational units at Morupule B each have a capacity of 150MW, while the BPC also has access to 160MW of emergency diesel power from plants in Orapa and Matshelagabedi. While on paper, the supply mix is capable of delivering 610MW, it was unclear by yesterday evening what actual output was available from the three Morupule B units.