Eskom extends winning streak
Eskom has announced it will continue to suspend load-shedding until 16:00 on Wednesday, 25 October.
“The continued suspension of load-shedding for more than four days is due to sufficient emergency generation reserves and the anticipated evening peak demand for today of 27,482MW,” it stated.
“Stage 1 load-shedding will resume on Wednesday from 16:00 until 05:00 on Thursday,” Eskom said.
Load-shedding will then be suspended between 05:00 and 16:00.
“This pattern will be repeated daily until further notice.”
This is South Africa’s longest break from rotational power cuts since September last year.
Eskom’s 18-day streak without load-shedding was broken on 6 September 2022, and there have been very few days without power cuts since then.
According to The Outlier and EskomSePush, there have been only three days without load-shedding in 2023 — 21 March, 1 October, and 15 October.
Before that, Eskom had only been able to provide a Saturday and Sunday without power cuts in October last year.
Eskom generation manager Eric Shumugam recently revealed that their coal power station fleet’s weekly energy availability factor (EAF) was above 60% for the first time in more than a year.
The EAF is a percentage figure indicating what proportion of Eskom’s installed nominal capacity is available to deliver power to the grid.
Weekly EAF charts compiled by energy expert Chris Yelland also show that Eskom’s available capacity managed to cross last year’s trendline — a very good sign.
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