Eskom said on Sunday that load shedding will not only stay suspended for the foreseeable future, but that electricity supply is now comfortably higher than demand, allowing it to do further short-term maintenance on its generating units.

Unplanned outages have reduced to just 11GW, down a huge 4.4GW compared to the same period in 2023 – or a reduction of nearly the equivalent of all six units of the Medupi coal-fired power station.

Despite not cutting the power for 39 consecutive days, Eskom said, too, that it has not made extensive use of its diesel-burning open-cycle gas turbines. It said rooftop solar has helped reduced demand, which, along with the improved generating performance, has helped eliminate load shedding for the past five weeks or so.

“Over the past few weeks, there has been a consistent and significant improvement in curbing unplanned outages – technically known as the ‘unplanned capacity loss factor’ – due to the success of the generation operational recovery plan which commenced in March 2023,” the utility said in a statement on Sunday.

“The reduction in unplanned outages … continues to have a positive impact on the energy availability factor (EAF). The EAF has been above 60% since 29 April 2024 and reached the 65% mark on 1 May 2024. The year-to-date performance is currently at 58.99%, which is a notable improvement from the 53% EAF in the same period last year,” the company added.

In fact, it now has sufficient supply to take “opportunistic windows” to do selective short-term maintenance. This, it said, will “further benefit our operational recovery as we get into the winter period”.

At a system update media briefing on 26 April, Eskom said it expects load shedding this winter to be significantly contained – at stage 2 or below – for much of the coming winter season. If that happens, it will mark a significant turnaround from last winter.

Improvements

At the briefing, Eskom said that between April 2023 and March 2024, the reliability of Eskom’s power plants has shown good improvement, with a year-on-year movement of 9% in unplanned losses, and a 19% decline in unit trips.

Eskom chairman Mteto Nyati said that the improvement in generating performance was due to several operational interventions:

Ensuring that well-functioning power stations continued to do so;
Focusing on the problematic power stations by doing proper maintenance;
Ensuring the right people were leading the power stations, with plant managers who are “comfortable they can handle the challenges those power stations are facing”. – © 2024 NewsCentral Media