Eskom hits back at stage 8 load-shedding claims
Eskom has denied that it secretly implemented stage 8 load-shedding this past week, despite shaving over 7,000MW of demand off the grid at one point.
According to Eskom’s nightly peak statistics, it shed 7,072MW around 18:32 on Thursday, 13 April 2023, when electricity demand was at its highest for the day.
Strictly speaking, that would qualify as stage 8 load-shedding, according to Eskom’s own definitions.
These stipulate how much energy is shed from the grid under each load-shedding stage, and are as follows:
- Stage 1 — Up to 1,000MW
- Stage 2 — 1,001 to 2,000MW
- Stage 3 — 2,001 to 3,000MW
- Stage 4 — 3,001 to 4,000MW
- Stage 5 — 4,001 to 5,000MW
- Stage 6 — 5,001 to 6,000MW
- Stage 7 — 6,001 to 7,000MW
- Stage 8 — 7,001 to 8,000MW
7,072MW would appear to fall under the last category — meaning it was stage 8 and not stage 6 as communicated.
Eskom included a note in brackets alongside the figure explaining that it was due to “stage 6 load-shedding and load curtailment stage 4”, but that disclaimer did not fly with many sceptics.
Feedback from Evening Peak
13 April 2023 pic.twitter.com/WQi4j4Qp49— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) April 13, 2023
Eskom spokesperson Daphne Mokwena told Sunday Times it was actually the “load reduced” amount that had exceeded 6,000MW on Thursday.
Mokwena explained the 7,072MW shed consisted of 5,719MW national load-shedding and 1,353MW load curtailment.
The latter is a mechanism allowing Eskom to demand that contractually-obligated high-demand user like smelters reduce their consumption.
This forms part of Eskom’s Demand Response programme, which lets the utility reduce demand within seconds to avoid exceeding supply.
In exchange for their participation, those high-demand users receive a financial incentive based on performance and potential exclusions from stage 1 and stage 2 load-shedding.
Mokwena said it was standard procedure that Eskom would request these customers to reduce their demand before announcing load-shedding stages to the public.
“Load that was reduced, which is the correct terminology, is indeed more than 6,000MW,” Mokwena said.
However, Eskom did not want to use the term “load reduction” in updates to describe the electricity being shed as it felt the public could confuse it for another measure by the same name.
“We refrain from using the terminology because the public becomes confused and thinks we are talking about load reduction that we normally implement prevent failing of equipment due to overload,” Mokwena said.
Eskom has often implemented load-reduction (as opposed to load-shedding or load-curtailment) in areas with high rates of illegal connections.
Eskom accused of hiding higher load-shedding stages on multiple occasions
Eskom’s explanation does raise questions about why load curtailment statistics and aren’t included more regularly in the evening peak updates.
This is not the first time Eskom has been accused of lying about how much load-shedding is implemented.
Examples similar to this past week go as far back as September 2020.
In that instance, energy analyst Ted Blom accused the utility of implementing stage 6 while telling the public stage 4 was in effect for two days.
Eskom’s spokesperson at the time, Sikonathi Mantshantsha, denied that the utility was deceiving the public, explaining that 1,200MW of the energy shed was load curtailment.
However, even when subtracting the 1,200MW from the 5,642MW shed at peak on one day and 5,359MW on the other, the capacity shed was still above 4,000MW.
More recently, the utility was accused of hiding that it had actually implemented stage 7 and stage 8 in February 2023, while only stage 6 had been announced.
On 20 February 2023, it reduced load by 6,595MW — equal to stage 7 — during the evening peak period.
The day after that, it reduced load by 7,045MW — equivalent to stage 8 — during the next’s evening’s peak demand period.
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