Electricity producer Eskom offered a frank, albeit disheartening, assessment of the state of its existing coal-fired fleet during a recent briefing of lawmakers, warning that it would take some time for it to arrest the current high levels of unplanned outages at the power stations.

The utility revealed that 32 out of its 87 coal-fired generating units required “major surgery”, with four said to be in a “critical condition”.

This appraisal follows on a poor operational performance in 2013/14, when the group’s unplanned capacity loss factor, or UCLF, rose to around 11%. During the period, its energy availability factor (EAF) fell to 75.1% and Eskom is forecasting plant availably of only 75.5% for the remainder of its 2014/15 financial year.

A five-point recovery plan has been introduced to improve the performance, with Eskom having reaffirmed its objective to return to an ‘80-10-10’ operating model, which implied 80% plant avail- ability, 10% planned outages and 10% unplanned events over a period of a year. But with insufficient capacity to provide the cushion needed to perform much-needed maintenance, the prognosis is more than disturbing.

Planned outages were set to increase to 10% of capacity as Eskom entered its high-maintenance summer period and the State-owned utility is forecasting that the system will be vulnerable to rotational load-shedding throughout the period.

The degree of tightness will depend on the UCLF, owing to limited prospects for new capacity. Although Medupi’s first 794 MW unit is scheduled to be synchronised to the grid on December 24, Unit 6 is expected to be operating at stable levels only by winter 2015.

In addition, should Eskom limit the use of its expensive open-cycle gas turbines (OCGTs) to levels approved in the corporate budget, its ability to meet demand will be seriously weakened.

Eskom spent a whopping R10.5-billion on diesel fuel in 2013/14, which was R8.1-billion above the R2.5-billion set aside by the regulator in its revenue determination for the period. Total OCGT production was 3 621 GWh, which as also significantly ahead of a budget of 1 284 GWh, translating into a load factor of over 19.3%.

Eskom says that, if its targeted EAF is met, there is a low risk of load-shedding, but it still cannot be ruled out. To avoid or limit planned or scheduled load reductions could require additional use of the OCGT plants in the Western Cape.

The key message is that, unless and until Eskom stablises the performance of its coal fleet, South Africa will not emerge from its prevailing power crisis, even once new capacity begins flowing from the much-delayed Medupi and Kusile projects.

Surely, it’s time for policymakers to begin embracing the many and varied private projects that could be introduced incrementally to stabilise and derisk the system. Instead of replacing like with like, there could be real merit in embracing the pent-up financial, technical and management resources available in the private sector.