Eskom achieved its highest daily EAF in 9 years on 20 July 2026

gogga_ said:
Lol and they acting like they've actually got things fixed when it's just demand that's dropped. Clowns.
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Both have happened.

They brought those 3 units back online thanks to the flu fixes. That one unit at Medupi that exploded etc.

There was that one year where they brought back something like 4-6GW in about 6 months.

Sure it was out in the first place due to incompetence and corruption, but to say they haven't fixed things as well is dishonest.

EAF though is also naturally going to rise as demand falls, they can take the pressure off their worst performing power stations.
 
porchrat said:
Both have happened.

They brought those 3 units back online thanks to the flu fixes. That one unit at Medupi that exploded etc.

There was that one year where they brought back something like 4-6GW in about 6 months.

Sure it was out in the first place due to incompetence and corruption, but to say they haven't fixed things as well is dishonest.

EAF though is also naturally going to rise as demand falls, they can take the pressure off their worst performing power stations.
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EAF hasn't got anything to do with demand. EAF is how much is available, you can have 100% EAF and still get LS if demand is over the ability of availability.
 
Lupus said:
EAF hasn't got anything to do with demand. EAF is how much is available, you can have 100% EAF and still get LS if demand is over the ability of availability.
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You can also have broken stuff in cold reserve and count that towards EAF.
 
Lupus said:
You generally won't put broken stuff in reserve, could moth-ball broken stuff though.
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In my hypothetical its not technically broken as they "fixed" it before putting it there but will fall over if ever needed.
 
Lupus said:
EAF hasn't got anything to do with demand. EAF is how much is available, you can have 100% EAF and still get LS if demand is over the ability of availability.
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As far as I see it it does have something to do with demand if you're putting your older and most unreliable power stations/units on cold reserve because demand is so low that they're not needed.

Units on cold reserve count positively towards EAF because they're, on paper at least, available.
 
Lupus said:
You generally won't put broken stuff in reserve, could moth-ball broken stuff though.
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You generally won't explode generating units by opening the wrong valve, or build them wrong in the first place leading to chimneys falling over, but here we stand.

If Eskom did everything the way you're generally supposed to do things the country wouldn't be in the mess it's in.
 
porchrat said:
As far as I see it it does have something to do with demand if you're putting your older and most unreliable power stations/units on cold reserve because demand is so low that they're not needed.

Units on cold reserve count positively towards EAF because they're, on paper at least, available.
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Generally you would actually put the unreliable and older either through PCLF which yes is part of EAF or you mothball them, you do not count them towards the reserve. As you cannot reliably count on them for service.
So lower demand would enable more PCLF and less UCLF
 
Lupus said:
Uhm no. If they have 50GW installed and they can provide 50GW that means they have a 100% EAF.
Demand has nothing to do with EAF,
EAF = (Energy Available / (Maximum Export Capacity * Hours in the Period)) * 100

Maximum Export Capacity (48 GW): 48,000 MW
Total Potential Energy (24 hours): 48,000 MW × 24 hours = 1,152,000 MWh
Target Energy Available (80% EAF): 1,152,000 MWh × 0.80 = 921,600 MWh
Average Available Hourly Output: 921,600/24 =38.4GW

So if demand was 0, Eskom could still supply 38GW if needed
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Um no. If demand is low, it is easier to take power plants offline for maintenance. Back during load shedding they could seldom afford to take plants offline for essential maintenance. As more and more people either close down businesses, or went off grid it became easy for Eskom to actually do the maintenance as they had excess supply. So improving the EAF is very directly linked to low demand. If demand was still high they would not have had the capacity to do the maintenance in the first place.
 
porchrat said:
You generally won't explode generating units by opening the wrong valve, or build them wrong in the first place leading to chimneys falling over, but here we stand.

If Eskom did everything the way you're generally supposed to do things the country wouldn't be in the mess it's in.
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Sure, you wouldn't cause a catastrophic nuclear meltdown during a training exercise... But here we are, or cause other issues cause your instrumentation cluster didn't have the right warnings.
Welcome to humanity, we do things, we break things we go oh crap lets not do that again ;-). Though here it takes a little longer
 
Lupus said:
Sure, you wouldn't cause a catastrophic nuclear meltdown during a training exercise... But here we are, or cause other issues cause your instrumentation cluster didn't have the right warnings.
Welcome to humanity, we do things, we break things we go oh crap lets not do that again ;-). Though here it takes a little longer
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If your yard stick for acceptable government failures is the USSR that's a whole other conversation.
 
Cius said:
Um no. If demand is low, it is easier to take power plants offline for maintenance. Back during load shedding they could seldom afford to take plants offline for essential maintenance. As more and more people either close down businesses, or went off grid it became easy for Eskom to actually do the maintenance as they had excess supply. So improving the EAF is very directly linked to low demand. If demand was still high they would not have had the capacity to do the maintenance in the first place.
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Or they managed to bring on 4GW of more power, which makes it even easier to repair older power stations. Lets see what did happen, 3 units Kusile repaired (2.4GW), last Kusile unit brought on grid (800MW) and Medupi repaired (800MW).
Demand being lower had barely any say in being able to repair power stations, if that was the case summer and the holiday periods would be the perfect time to do repairs, which yes they do do, but it didn't really help much over the course of 2 and 1/2 years of constant shedding.
Oddly enough LS stopped when they brought online more power stations, which then allowed more planned maintenance even during colder months, though this year has been a relatively mild winter in comparison.
1785483135106.png
Demand is lower yes, but it's not low, it's still sitting at around 26 to 28GW a day, sure it's not the 30 to 32GW demands 2021/2022 and 2023 had, but it's not "low".
1785483208522.png

The black line during 2021/2022/2023/2024 and 2025 was a loooooot closer to that blue and purple line.
 
Lupus said:
Or they managed to bring on 4GW of more power, which makes it even easier to repair older power stations. Lets see what did happen, 3 units Kusile repaired (2.4GW), last Kusile unit brought on grid (800MW) and Medupi repaired (800MW).
Demand being lower had barely any say in being able to repair power stations, if that was the case summer and the holiday periods would be the perfect time to do repairs, which yes they do do, but it didn't really help much over the course of 2 and 1/2 years of constant shedding.
Oddly enough LS stopped when they brought online more power stations, which then allowed more planned maintenance even during colder months, though this year has been a relatively mild winter in comparison.
View attachment 1926143
Demand is lower yes, but it's not low, it's still sitting at around 26 to 28GW a day, sure it's not the 30 to 32GW demands 2021/2022 and 2023 had, but it's not "low".
View attachment 1926144

The black line during 2021/2022/2023/2024 and 2025 was a loooooot closer to that blue and purple line.
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4GW is a 10% boost to EAF in schrodinger's cold reserve so we can say EAF is 70-80% :P

Solar has allowed them to burn less diesel yes?
 
wingnut771 said:
4GW is a 10% boost to EAF in schrodinger's cold reserve so we can say EAF is 70-80% :P
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Well it was actually a 10% boost indeed, but they were part of the EAF, first under UCLF, then PCLF possibly even OCLF for a bit (when they were like we have no cooking clue what to do with this).
 
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