Eskom's major immediate challenge is to strike a balance between supply and demand and to raise its power generation reserve margin from the current 8% to 10%, to the global benchmark of 15%, the utility's general manager (system operator) transmission division, Kannan Lakmeeharan, told delegates at an "Infrastructure solutions for African challenges" presentation in Johannesburg.
The presentation, arranged by JSE-listed business IT solutions provider Square One Solutions Group, focused on the challenges businesses face in terms of the infrastructure support, particularly power and cooling, to support and achieve the uptime requirements of today's critical data centres, especially in the current climate of frequent power outages.
Presenting an overview of the state of national power generation, Lakmeeharan said a capital expenditure programme of R150 billion over the next five years has been put forward.
He added that Eskom's total capacity of 36 748MW at the beginning of this year had already increased to 38 368MW as a result of the construction and commissioning of two OCGT (gas turbine) generation units in the Cape, and the return to service of generation units at the mothballed Camden power station.
Peak demand forecast for 2007 is 36 306MW which, viewed against current capacity of 38 368MW, results in the slim reserve margin of 8% to 10%. In 2001, the reserve margin was 25%.
"The recent experiences in Cape Town and Bedfordview indicate the challenges we face," Lakmeeharan said. "As a result of various circumstances, many being outside of Eskom's control, we commenced late with construction of new generation capacity, and robust GDP growth over the last three years was higher than anticipated and resulted in high growth in the customer base, placing pressure on the existing ageing generation plant."
The two key challenges on demand and supply are driven by the fact that South Africa has reached the end of its surplus generation capacity. The first challenge, according to Lakmeeharan, is to avoid a mismatch in demand and supply, because excess capacity results in stranded resources, while a capacity shortage will constrain economic growth.
"The second challenge is to make the correct choice of capacity to be constructed from a wide array of options that differ dramatically in terms of cost, lead time to construction, environmental impact and operating characteristics."
There are a number of objectives in the capacity expansion programme, all aimed at supporting economic growth. These include: world-class safety performance; strong partnerships and strategic alliances with local and international partners; the development of critical skills for the electricity supply industry; promoting the expansion of local manufacturing industries, including BBBEE; sustaining Eskom's position as the world's lowest cost electricity producer (30% cheaper than Australia); and maintaining South Africa's status as an attractive destination for energy intensive industry.
Lakmeeharan said the capacity projects pipeline involved research, opportunity identification, pre-feasibility, feasibility, business case, contract concluding and, finally, construction phases. Resources being evaluated include cogeneration, hydro, nuclear, gas, coal and solar.
"Looking ahead to 2025, our generation portfolio includes the addition of 40 000MW of capacity, reducing the proportion of coal capacity in the generation mix, maximising additional nuclear capacity and increasing our renewable energy capacity - provided the economics are acceptable - to more than 1 600MW.
"Imports will be pursued to the maximum of the prevailing reserve margin, we will implement additional pumped storage, where technically and economically feasible, and a demand-side management and energy efficiency programme with a target of 8 000MW, while promoting the development of incentives for renewables, distributed generation options and energy efficiency."
Lakmeeharan acknowledged that there is a power crisis, but said it was being dealt with properly and holdings of emergency spares for transmission problems were being increased, with an emphasis on more being better than less.
"Yes, there will be outages over the next four years, but the doomsday scenarios some people are sketching will not happen." He added that Eskom has proposed an 18% increase in tariff on the back of, among other variables, the planned R150 billion expansion programme.
Other presentations focused on data centre power and cooling infrastructure technology. Here, Square One is a channel partner of international uninterruptible power supply solutions company APC/MGE, formed recently by the merger of APC and MGE, both leading world market UPS players. State-of-the-art solutions that can achieve 99.9999% availability of power supply in distributed redundant configurations are designed and implemented by Square One based on APC/MGE equipment.
These solutions employ an integrated architecture for data centres comprising power, power distribution, racks, cable distribution, integrated services, cooling, cooling distribution, cabling and management tools that adopt a "zero tolerance" approach to downtime.
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Square One Solutions Group is listed on the Software & Computer Services sector of the JSE Securities Exchange. It focuses on providing IT-based business-enabling solutions, has a national footprint and more than 20 years of experience in the South African market. Square One Solutions offers value-based solutions centred on IP networking solutions, policy solutions, infrastructure solutions and product coding and marking solutions, to its key target market of enterprise, SME, corporate and government clients. The company also distributes document solutions, colour input and output devices and provides 24x7 national support and service. For more information visit www.sq1.co.za.
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