State-owned power utility Eskom, together with the Department of Minerals and Energy and key municipalities, is embarking on an ambitious demand-side management (DSM) scheme, which, if successful, could reduce demand significantly and help delay the introduction of new, and increasingly-expensive, generation capacity.

Addressing science graduates at the University of Witwatersrand recently, Eskom’s Dr Steve Lennon reported that a R10-billion energy-efficiency programme, aimed at reducing demand for electricity in South Africa by 3000 MW over the next six years, had been initiated. “This will not only assist with the capacity situation, but will also reduce environmental impacts and take costs out of the economy,” Lennon enthused.

The programme had been modelled, partly, on Eskom’s successful DSM roll-out in the Western Cape, which evolved during the rolling blackouts and daily load shedding that took place in the province during early 2006. The programme emerged following serious outages at the Koeberg nuclear power station, compounded by limitations on the transmission system linking the Western Cape to the coal-fired power stations of Mpumalanga.

“We implemented a fast-track energy-efficiency programme which included rolling out five-million efficient light bulbs – and the innovative power alert, which you may have seen widely broadcast on television. The success of these initiatives and others meant that we virtually avoided all load shedding in the Western Cape throughout winter last year – and hopefully we will achieve similar success in minimising load shedding nationally over the next few years,” Lennon said.

He indicated that the programme, together with its R150-billion, five-year rolling plan to build new generation capacity and expand the transmission and distribution system, would require innovative thinking and, thus, called on the science graduates to maximise “the contribution of your knowledge and inherent innovation in building our nation into a global force to be reckoned with”.

He said Eskom was also seeking to encourage greater innovation internally, both to support its efforts in balancing the supply and demand, as well as in seeking out new environmentally-sustainable technologies.

“To this end, we are well advanced in executing an exciting portfolio of technology projects which include underground coal gasification (in fact we produced our first gas in January this year), large-scale solar power, carbon capture and storage, advanced nuclear, biomass, ocean-current energy, high-voltage, direct current, or HVDC, transmission, and advanced energy-efficiency technologies,” Lennon said.

Reflecting on the group’s big capacity-building programme, Lennon reported that Eskom currently had more than 10 000 MW of capacity under construction, with new or refurbished plant coming on line at regular intervals.

“We are currently building in excess of 3000 km of new transmission lines and all of this will cost us approximately R150-billion in the next five years alone! More is on the way – with investment decisions for new clean coal, wind and nuclear power stations having just been taken,” he concluded.