Eskom playing a dangerous game: energy analyst

JOHANNESBURG - As the country returns to stage 6 rolling blackouts, energy expert Ted Blom says the reason we've avoided this, is because the power utility has cut its own safety margins.

READ: Eskom implements stage 6 blackouts from 4pm

He warns that even if one power station goes down unexpectedly, there is a very real danger of a full collapse of the grid.

Blom said, "it seems to me that Eskom's running on much thinner margins and that's why they've been able to ameliorate the level of load-shedding over the last month or two since the new energy minister's taken over. What he doesn't seem to realise, this is a very dangerous game."

"If you cut the safety margins you more than double the probability of a good meltdown and this is something that it seems to me the people at Megawatt Park have forgotten since they've had a change in management or just never realised from the get go but they're now tempting disaster. Your safety margins should be 15-percent of your demand."

"So if we have a 30000MW demand we should have a safety measure of at least 1500 to 2000MW as a margin. Eskom as I said is now running at half of that and the problem is if you half that you get to 750MW, and we've got units bigger than 750MW."

"In fact, all the Kusile and the Medupi units are all bigger than 750MW so the moment you trip one of those while you're running on a so-called thinned out safety margin, you will melt the grid if the operators aren't fast enough to dump load like super super super quick. In a flash. If they've gone to the bathroom it's overs-kadovers.