Eskom chief executive Andre de Ruyter yesterday announced that next Friday, the parastatal is set to sign some land lease agreements to renewable power producers as part of its turnaround strategy.
Speaking at the Joburg Indaba on Thursday, De Ruyter said there were a couple of other things Eskom has launched.
“We are leasing land, close to our power stations with grid access. We were delighted by the first responders, and we will be signing those agreements on the 14th of October, that’s about 2 000 megawatts. It was three times oversubscribed, by highly capable investors.“
“Why do we lease the land? Why don’t we sell the land? Because we want to retain control. If you don't use the land to erect renewable generation capacity. We want to kick you off, if you let cattle graze in the land, that does not achieve the objective that we have in mind,” he said.
De Ruyter said the first tranche of land was only 4 000 acres, but there was a further 61 000 acres of land available that Eskom intends to make available on this basis regularly to try and facilitate the addition of new generation capacity.
“We think that this is quite a creative way forward. We’re also making strategic grid investments that will unlock about 17 gigawatts of grid capacity,” he said.
De Ruyter said Eskom had power stations that were coming to the end of their lives as they inevitably do.
“We are not going to ‘just put a padlock on the gate’ and walk away. We believe that we do have a duty to communities that have supported us for many, many years in some cases, generations. We intend to repurpose and repower,“ he said.
According to De Ruyter, the parastatal was in advanced discussions with the World Bank to obtain support for the repurposing and repairing of the Komati power station.
“People sometimes look at us and say you must be completely crazy to be shutting down Komati at a time when generation capacity is at such a premium. The fact of the matter is that we can’t operate commodities legally. At the end of October, we will be non-compliant with government safety regulations; again, we cannot break the law,” he said.
De Ruyter said Eskom has also obtained grant funding from the Global Energy Alliance Partners to start a training centre at Komati to train PV and wind technicians so that they can go and work in the industry at the moment.
“The renewable energy associations tell us that they have vacancies to the tune of some 16 000 people who are not available in the market because they haven’t been trained,” he said.
De Ruyter said Eskom partnered with the Cape Peninsula University of Technology to train the students.
He said the capacity issues of the grid started in 1998. When Eskom told the government that new capacity was needed, it said: “No terribly sorry, that is not necessary, make do with what you’ve got,” he said.
He said mechanical equipment had a finite life. “The harder you run that equipment, the shorter the life becomes, and that’s exactly what happened,” he said.
De Ruyter said the country needs to procure additional capacity.
“That’s about 2 300 megawatts that are needed. We need to get more capacity onto the grid. We made offers to the private sector where their excess generation capacity to sell that to us. We are still waiting on approval concurrence,“ he said.
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