Eskom CEO André de Ruyter has responded to an open letter submitted to him by the Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of Southern Africa (Seifsa), dated November 23.

In the open letter, Seifsa wrote on behalf of 18 employer organisations, representing 170 000 employees, asking for his assurance that corruption at the power utility is being rooted out, as well as asking for Eskom to effect greater predictability on blackouts for businesses going forward.

In his response, De Ruyter acknowledges the immense contribution of the metals and engineering sector to the country and the contribution of Seifsa and its members to the economy.

He explains that, while Eskom regrets supply interruptions in past weeks, it is important for Seifsa to understand that load-shedding is the last resort in the management of the power system – to protect and prevent the system from collapsing of even having a countrywide blackout.

Eskom forecasts potential load-shedding based on the maintenance plan of its fleet and an assumed amount of unplanned unavailable generation capacity; 11 000 MW in the winter and 12 000 MW in the summer months, as the base case.

Eskom then adds two risk scenarios by adding an additional 1 000 MW and 2 000 MW to this assumption.

For the base case, De Ruyter notes, the current forecast is two days of Stage 2 load-shedding for the next year. For the +1 000 MW risk case, this rises to 104 days of up to Stage 2 load-shedding, and for the +2 000 MW risk case, 252 days of up to Stage 3 load-shedding.

Eskom, however, endeavours to keep the unplanned losses to below even the base case.

It is essential that, for sustainable performance improvement, Eskom continues to implement its reliability maintenance programme and to keep in mind that 4 000 MW to 6 000 MW additional national capacity is required to significantly reduce the risk of load-shedding.

“I welcome Seifsa’s availability to assist Eskom in any way possible, and would therefore like to propose that, together with some of my executive team, we have a meeting with you and your team to discuss ways to reduce the impact of load-shedding on your federation member companies,” De Ruyter notes in his response.