Cape Town - Public hospitals have spent more than half a billion rand on diesel just to keep the lights on during load shedding between April 2022 and March this year.
That amount of more than R685 million is expected to significantly increase in the coming weeks as Eskom again announced stage 6 load shedding indefinitely.
Apart from other generation challenges, the current situation was exacerbated by the loss of four major units which were on extended outages.
“Due to a shortage of generation capacity, Stage 6 load shedding will continue to be implemented until further notice. Breakdowns are currently at 17 481MW of generating capacity while the generating capacity out of service for planned maintenance is 5 657MW.
Over the past 24 hours a generation unit each at Duvha and Medupi power stations were returned to service,” said Eskom.
Units 1, 2 and 3 of Kusile Power Station are currently also offline, with work under way to bring these units back online from November.
While Unit 1 at Koeberg Power Station is also currently on a long-term outage for maintenance and refuelling as well as the replacement of the steam generators and is expected to return to service on August 6.
The unavailability of these units remove 3 080MW of capacity from the grid, equivalent to three stages of load shedding.
This means that the already overstretched taxpayer will feel more pain as some hospitals have been allocated generators to keep the lights on.
Responding to Freedom Front Plus MP Philip van Staden’s parliamentary questions, Health Minister Joe Phaahla said hospitals exceeded the budgeted amount by R19 281000 when they spent R685 935 000 on buying diesel.
A total of R372 242 000 was initially budgeted for diesel during the financial year but this increased to R666 655 000 when the budget was adjusted.
Breakdown on expenditure by provinces:
- Eastern Cape spent R81 134 000;
- Free State R21 263 000;
- Gauteng R131 357 000;
- KwaZulu Natal R178 387 000;
- Limpopo R57 656 000;
- Mpumalanga R44 659 000;
- Northern Cape R28 303 000;
- North West R40 494 000; and
- Western Cape R102 684 000.
Phaahla said the generators were in a workable condition.
Last week, the Cape Times reported that the national Department of Health was seeking additional funding to keep the lights on at health facilities as more institutions were yet to be exempted from load-shedding.
The additional funding support was for fuel, oil and the servicing of generators.
“The hospitals have been forced to use their budget on fuel, oil and medical gas just to keep healthcare facilities running,” he said.
Phaaha had also indicated that they were seeking additional funding for the roll-out of the solar energy and battery storage as back-up supply to all healthcare facilities.
He told van Staden that he has directed the department’s director-general to meet with Eskom to jointly seek interventions to mitigate against load shedding.
“The meetings with Eskom are happening on a regular basis to seek for more exemptions of healthcare facilities. There are further ongoing engagements with both for more exemptions of healthcare facilities.
There are further ongoing engagements with both COGTA (Cooperative governance and Traditional Affairs) and various municipalities regarding additional exemptions for both private and public health care facilities from the grid,” he said.
Out of the already 76 exempted hospitals, 26 are directly supplied by Eskom and 50 by municipalities.
Meanwhile, experts say the power utility has quietly implemented, not for the first time, stage 8 load shedding.
Energy expert Lungile Mashele said: “Stage 8 happened last week.
However this was not the first time this year. We had over 7000MW in reduced demand. This was a mix of manual load reduction, interruptible load shedding and virtual power station.”
The biggest issues in generation relate to “a lack of reliability, maintenance, funding and maintenance planning” said Mashele, adding that newly appointed Eskom Group Executive for Generation Bheki Nxumalo was the best person for the job with his vast experience.
Independent consultant in energy research Hilton Trollip added: “We are in stage 8. It is stage 7 plus the cutting off of supplies to industry.
The coal plans will continue to deteriorate and until we start connecting new generation it will steadily get worse.
The worst is a blackout, where demand exceeds supply because the reserve is smaller than sudden large system events such as generators tripping or transmission system failures.
“The private customer contracted IPPS of some 4 000MW that have been announced will only start taking pressure off the system in about a year. That’s the material/physical reality that no new committees, plans, Ministers or, quite frankly, anything can change in the next six months to a year.”
Cape Times