Eskom not acknowledging role of reduced demand in improved generation performance

Daniel Puchert

Daniel Puchert

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Truth about the end of Eskom load-shedding

While the improved performance of Eskom's electricity generation division has contributed to a decline in load-shedding in 2024, it does not tell the full story.

Eskom recently provided a rosy Summer Outlook and business operations update and has had 160 days without load-shedding.
 
I mean just looking at week 12 through to 15 of 2024
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Already shows that demand was way higher already then what the red line shows.
Here is starting week 14 and April 1st as a public holiday.
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Demand reduction is definitely a part of the equation. It's a small part though.

Whether people like to admit it or not the lion's share of the gains have come from Eskom's improvement. Not surprising considering we learnt the truth, that they dumped the BEE maintenance contractors.
 
porchrat said:
Demand reduction is definitely a part of the equation. It's a small part though.

Whether people like to admit it or not the lion's share of the gains have come from Eskom's improvement. Not surprising considering we learnt the truth, that they dumped the BEE maintenance contractors.
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Yup the ones that actually broke things to keep getting business.
 
“Over 6,000 MW of electricity generation now sits on the rooftops of homes and businesses. This will also explain why Eskom needs massive price increases to survive.”
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Correction. It should be 6,000 MWp. Peak. Nobody’s solar plant is outputting at full power for the full day
 
So out of interest did the Mybb journo actually check wtaf wayne was referring to? The weird graph that has 2018, 2019, 2021,2022,2023 and 2024 on it? With no verified source?
 
It's good to acknowledge that the drop in demand thanks to residential and business solar helped. But why did it help... That's what must be acknowledged. Along with why it was so important. Let's be clear. The efforts to reduce sabotage and corruption helped a lot too. As did engagement with technical experts. But..

It was extremely clear at one point that the pivotal reason why the EAF couldn't improve, in fact was worsening, was the lack of maintenance and overloading of the available capacity. And a lack of redundant capacity was central to this sad state of affairs. A lack of funds, nearly as much. Even with demand reduced from load shedding, they had to burn their stations and funds just to keep the lights on some of the time. Leaving practically zero redundant capacity and funds exactly for the maintenance that was so dearly needed to improve EAF.

It must be acknowledged that without reduced demand, effective maintenance would not even be possible. i.e. From where we were - Improved maintenance is a secondary benefit of reduced demand. Engaging with experts, and all efforts to reduce corruption and sabotage were important steps to take to improve EAF. But reduced demand was the first and most important step. Without it, the other efforts would have indeed helped a bit. But not nearly as swiftly. Because redundant capacity to make room to take assets offline for maintenance would have only slowly become available.

Thus the actions taken by government recently were important. But the step government took, that was way more impactful, was regulatory changes to make it easier for private citizens and privately owned businesses to deploy small scale alternative energy. There's still a lot of untapped potential there. Potential to bring way more benefit for the citizens of SA, than merely the end of load shedding. We should shy away from letting our attention be diverted to the short term issues of paying the bills for all the looting and mismanagement. The hangover of the party. The end of load shedding is the bare minimum passing score. We must keep aiming higher.
 
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The Trutherizer said:
It's good to acknowledge that the drop in demand thanks to residential and business solar helped. But why did it help... That's what must be acknowledged. Along with why it was so important. Let's be clear. The efforts to reduce sabotage and corruption helped a lot too. As did engagement with technical experts. But..

It was extremely clear at one point that the pivotal reason why the EAF couldn't improve, in fact was worsening, was the lack of maintenance and overloading of the available capacity. And a lack of redundant capacity was central to this sad state of affairs. A lack of funds, nearly as much. Even with demand reduced from load shedding, they had to burn their stations and funds just to keep the lights on some of the time. Leaving practically zero redundant capacity and funds exactly for the maintenance that was so dearly needed to improve EAF.

It must be acknowledged that without reduced demand, effective maintenance would not even be possible. i.e. From where we were - Improved maintenance is a secondary benefit of reduced demand. Engaging with experts, and all efforts to reduce corruption and sabotage were important steps to take to improve EAF. But reduced demand was the first and most important step. Without it, the other efforts would have indeed helped a bit. But not nearly as swiftly. Because redundant capacity to make room to take assets offline for maintenance would have only slowly become available.

Thus the actions taken by government recently were important. But the step government took, that was way more impactful, was regulatory changes to make it easier for private citizens and privately owned businesses to deploy small scale alternative energy. There's still a lot of untapped potential there. Potential to bring way more benefit for the citizens of SA, than merely the end of load shedding. We should shy away from letting our attention be diverted to the short term issues of paying the bills for all the looting and mismanagement. The hangover of the party. The end of load shedding is the bare minimum passing score. We must keep aiming higher.
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Honestly, I used to think it was a case of Eskom being given wiggle room to perform proper maintenance. Now I think they just finally are performing proper maintenance because they went back to the OEMs and ditched the crooked BEE contractors. Now when something gets fixed quality work is done and it stays fixed.
 
porchrat said:
Honestly, I used to think it was a case of Eskom being given wiggle room to perform proper maintenance. Now I think they just finally are performing proper maintenance because they went back to the OEMs and ditched the crooked BEE contractors. Now when something gets fixed quality work is done and it stays fixed.
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All important. I just see reduced demand as the most important factor. And of course, you get small maintenance of the type to keep the wheels on the bus; And then big comprehensive maintenance exercises to promote long term viability (and hopefully reduce ongoing small maintenance). You can do the one without much wiggle room, the latter not so much.
 
The Trutherizer said:
All important. I just see reduced demand as the most important factor. And of course, you get small maintenance of the type to keep the wheels on the bus; And then big comprehensive maintenance exercises to promote long term viability (and hopefully reduce ongoing small maintenance). You can do the one without much wiggle room, the latter not so much.
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The demand reduction is certainly part of this, but it's not the most important factor. Not in terms of GWs. Look even at that biased graph that ignores the year we ALL know demand dropped through the floor, with no subsequent improvement in reliability of the generating fleet. Even that thing says what... 2GWs of reduced demand?

Just bringing the extra units online in December from Kusile alone was something like 3 stages of loadshedding. Forget all the capacity improvements Eskom has made since then that clawed back something like 7GW.

The solar people have installed isn't even close to that. It all adds up, but it very obviously, and very objectively, is not the most important factor.

I don't like Eskom, but I won't lie, I won't bend the truth, to try and cover up what they've achieved this year. We owe the lack of loadshedding to their capacity improvements. That's undeniable. Even if it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

You can't claw back 6 stages of loadshedding AND load reduction AND big consumers like mines cutting extra GWs with just a 2GW drop in demand. I mean come on.

I was one of those people that said it would easily take a decade to get rid of loadshedding. Turns out I, like a lot of people, underestimated how useless Eskom had been up until recently. All it took was a few months of maintenance performed by qualified people from OEMs, instead of the current BEE contractors Eskom had been determined to let destroy this country, and viola... capacity exceeds demand to the point where whole generating units can be shutdown. Incredible.
 
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Jola said:
Yeah, but many people have batteries that run throughout the non-sunshine hours.
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If you say so, the entire residential usage is barely 6GW, so what you're saying is that every resident has solar?
 
porchrat said:
The demand reduction is certainly part of this, but it's not the most important factor. Not in terms of GWs. Look even at that biased graph that ignores the year we ALL know demand dropped through the floor, with no subsequent improvement in reliability of the generating fleet. Even that thing says what... 2GWs of reduced demand?

Just bringing the extra units online in December from Kusile alone was something like 3 stages of loadshedding. Forget all the capacity improvements Eskom has made since then that clawed back something like 7GW.

The solar people have installed isn't even close to that. It all adds up, but it very obviously, and very objectively, is not the most important factor.

I don't like Eskom, but I won't lie, I won't bend the truth, to try and cover up what they've achieved this year. We owe the lack of loadshedding to their capacity improvements. That's undeniable. Even if it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

You can't claw back 6 stages of loadshedding AND load reduction AND big consumers like mines cutting extra GWs with just a 2GW drop in demand. I mean come on.

I was one of those people that said it would easily take a decade to get rid of loadshedding. Turns out I, like a lot of people, underestimated how useless Eskom had been up until recently. All it took was a few months of maintenance performed by qualified people from OEMs, instead of the current BEE contractors Eskom had been determined to let destroy this country, and viola... capacity exceeds demand to the point where whole generating units can be shutdown. Incredible.
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Yeah pretty much my stance, though from checking things I did have a feeling it was Eskom staff being useless. Mainly as I checked what we had before, what we have and what was being generated.
Plus what had been added in the mean time
 
porchrat said:
The demand reduction is certainly part of this, but it's not the most important factor. Not in terms of GWs. Look even at that biased graph that ignores the year we ALL know demand dropped through the floor, with no subsequent improvement in reliability of the generating fleet. Even that thing says what... 2GWs of reduced demand?

Just bringing the extra units online in December from Kusile alone was something like 3 stages of loadshedding. Forget all the capacity improvements Eskom has made since then that clawed back something like 7GW.

The solar people have installed isn't even close to that. It all adds up, but it very obviously, and very objectively, is not the most important factor.

I don't like Eskom, but I won't lie, I won't bend the truth, to try and cover up what they've achieved this year. We owe the lack of loadshedding to their capacity improvements. That's undeniable. Even if it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

You can't claw back 6 stages of loadshedding AND load reduction AND big consumers like mines cutting extra GWs with just a 2GW drop in demand. I mean come on.

I was one of those people that said it would easily take a decade to get rid of loadshedding. Turns out I, like a lot of people, underestimated how useless Eskom had been up until recently. All it took was a few months of maintenance performed by qualified people from OEMs, instead of the current BEE contractors Eskom had been determined to let destroy this country, and viola... capacity exceeds demand to the point where whole generating units can be shutdown. Incredible.
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Kusile "units" (plural)? No... One unit was brought online in December. That's 800MW (0.8GW). 3 Stages??? Maybe around Mpumalanga and Gauteng. Where that stations is located.
I seriously doubt that played a bigger role than: A 2GW reduction in average weekly demand from across SA, some parts of the day way more. To let them "claw back" the other 7GW you mention.

And don't forget. 3 Kusile units are going offline again in October. To fix their chimneys. Damage that was directly caused by redlining them for too long, often ignoring proper maintenance, because there wasn't enough redundant capacity at one point. That's going to take months. Load shedding in some parts could very well return then. Meantime the reduction in demand thanks to residential solar will just keep growing. Slowly at time, quickly at other times. But never falling. It's massively distributed. If a single system goes offline. That's nothing. And in a week or two it's fixed.
 
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The Trutherizer said:
Kusile "units" (plural)? No... One unit was brought online in December. That's 800MW (0.8GW). 3 Stages??? Maybe around Mpumalanga and Gauteng. Where that stations is located.
I seriously doubt that played a bigger role than: A 2GW reduction in average weekly demand from across SA, some parts of the day way more. To let them "claw back" the other 7GW you mention.

And don't forget. 3 Kusile units are going offline again in October. To fix their chimneys. Damage that was directly caused by redlining them for too long, often ignoring proper maintenance, because there wasn't enough redundant capacity at one point. That's going to take months. Load shedding in some parts could very well return then. Meantime the reduction in demand thanks to residential solar will just keep growing. Slowly at time, quickly at other times. But never falling. It's massively distributed. If a single system goes offline. That's nothing. And in a week or two it's fixed.
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You're thinking of unit 5. The one that was never brought online before.

I'm talking about the 3 that were offline because the chimney collapsed. They got temporary chimneys about a month apart each towards the end of the year.

A total of 4 units were brought online towards the end of 2023 at around 800MW each with the final one being in Decemeber. Units 1,2,3 and 5.

That's 3 stages of loadshedding and some change mate. That alone knocks any demand reduction from solar install into a cocked hat. Then Eskom gained further capacity on top of that leading up to March. In comparison to that, we had demand reduction thanks to COVID in 2020 and saw no improvement in the generating fleet. It's very obviously not about demand reduction. It's about Eskom finally getting rid of the corrupt maintenance contractors that were ruining those power stations.

I know you don't want to give Eskom credit, I don't either, but if we want to be honest people we have to. I know you want to believe it was all down to the plucky enterprising people of SA but that's just not the case I'm afraid.
 
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