Eskom increases load-shedding as five generating units break down
Eskom has announced that load-shedding will increase to stage 5 from 16:00 on Monday, 6 March 2023.
Stage 5 will continue until 05:00 Tuesday morning, when it will reduce to stage 4 until further notice.
The increase comes after five generating units failed on Monday.
Eskom provided no additional details.
Yesterday, Eskom announced it planned to run at stage 4 load-shedding until Tuesday morning, after which it hoped to implement an alternating schedule of stage 3 and stage 4 power cuts.
It said generating units at the Camden, Duvha, Majuba, and Kriel power stations suffered breakdowns.
The return to service of generating units at Hendrina, Medupi, and Tutuka was delayed, while repairs to damaged towers from Cahora Bassa are taking longer than anticipated.
The additional five generating units that broke down today come as several industry commentators sounded the alarm about Eskom’s declining energy availability factor (EAF).
EAF shows the percentage of Eskom’s available generation capacity — when there is no planned maintenance or unplanned breakdowns, the EAF would be 100%.
Over the past three years, Eskom’s EAF has rapidly declined, dipping below 50% at the end of December and the beginning of January.
Yet, in October, public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan had announced a new board for the ailing state-owned power utility and gave it the mandate to increase Eskom’s EAF to 75% within a reasonable timeframe.
In line with Gordhan’s mandate, the board said it aimed to increase EAF to 60% before Eskom’s financial year-end on 31 March.
Energy expert Chris Yelland has said that reaching this target is officially impossible.
“To all those clever people at Eskom Generation, the Eskom board, and the Department of Public Enterprises who set a target EAF of 60% for FY2022/23,” Yelland stated.
“To achieve the target EAF of 60%, the average EAF for the final five weeks of FY2022/23 would have to be 90%. Impossible.”
It should be noted that Eskom’s latest EAF figures go up to week 8, which was the second-last week of February. We are currently in week 10.
Yelland’s chart for Eskom’s EAF from 2021 is included below.
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