Big win in Eskom’s fight against load-shedding

Eskom head of generation Bheki Nxumalo says the state-owned power utility’s decision to fix its generating fleet is paying off and saved the entity a lot of money.

Speaking to Newzroom Afrika, Nxumalo said capacity losses had fallen below 9,000MW, and power stations like Medupi and Kusile are performing exceptionally well.

“If you look at last year this time, we were hovering around 16,400MW (capacity loss). Now, we are around 9,000MW, which means we’ve clawed back 7,000MW,” he said.

Nxumalo explained that the investment to add that amount of new capacity to the grid would be about R100 billion. Fixing the fleet was much cheaper.

“If you look at the amount of money that was spent, this was a cheaper option from where I’m sitting and where we are at Eskom, to say lets fix the current fleet,” said Nxumalo.

While he acknowledged challenges at South Africa’s two newest coal-fired power stations, Medupi and Kusile, he said they are now the top-performing stations in Eskom’s fleet.

“We had some teething issues the start up but now those stations are performing exceptionally well,” said Nxumalo.

Professor Sampson Mamphweli of the South African National Energy Development Institute believes load-shedding could be history by the end of 2024.

“I am very much optimistic that we may be able to continue to sustain this until we start the beginning of summer, and if we go through the beginning of summer without load-shedding, we might see the end of load-shedding,” he said.

“I am very confident that by November, December, government should be declaring the end of load-shedding in South Africa.”

He also attributed the improvements to improved generation, reduced capacity losses, and lower demand.

Reducing capacity losses has a marked effect on Eskom’s Energy Availability Factor (EAF), which combined with reduced demand in the country, has allowed Eskom to suspend load-shedding since 25 March 2024.

According to data from Nedbank Group’s Economic Unit, these are the two primary factors behind Eskom’s miraculous performance in recent months.

Demand on the national power grid has reduced significantly with the uptake of rooftop solar by many South African households and businesses.

Rooftop solar generation capacity in the country has more than doubled since July 2022.

Eskom tracks rooftop solar capacity in its weekly system status reports, and its latest shows that South Africa has nearly 6,000MW of rooftop solar generation.

Much of this growth is the result of the private sector, boosted by President Cyril Ramaphosa increasing the cap on private generation capacity in 2021.

Before the adjustment, the government required businesses with solar generation outputs of more than 1MW to get a licence from the National Energy Regulator of South Africa.

He increased the cap to 100MW in June 2021 and lifted it entirely a year later.

While increased solar capacity has reduced demand from households and businesses, making a generation shortfall less likely, Eskom has also significantly improved its EAF.

The EAF is the ratio of available generation relative to the maximum amount of energy that could be produced over a specific period.

Eskom also tracks its average weekly EAF in its weekly system status reports. The figure reached its highest point for 2024 in week 29 (15 to 21 July), when it hit 67.68%.

The previous peak was achieved in week 27 (7 to 13 July), when it reached 65.86%.

Therefore, Eskom’s generation fleet is now performing consistently better than it has in recent years.

Eskom attributed the improved stability to the efforts of its 40,000-odd employees in executing its Generation Recovery Plan, while conducting extensive planned maintenance.

According to Nedbank’s data, Eskom’s average annual EAF has declined from around 80% in 2017/18 to a low of under 55% in 2023/24.

Its average weekly EAF dropped to below 50% at one point in early 2023. However, the improvements in late 2023 and early 2024 have resulted in significant improvement in Eskom’s weekly average EAF figure.