Eskom Code Green for Christmas

Eskom’s latest system status outlook shows that the power utility anticipates no load-shedding for the weeks of Christmas and New Year’s Eve.

For many of the years since the rotational power cuts were first implemented, load-shedding disappeared during this period due to significantly reduced demand.

Over this time, South Africa’s heaviest energy consumers — mines, factories, and other industrial facilities — shut down operations.

However, Eskom’s generating capacity deteriorated to the extent that it had to buck the trend at the end of 2022 and early 2023.

Eskom’s system status outlook in mid-November 2022 showed that it could implement load-shedding for the first time during this period.

In a subsequent system status outlook, Eskom abruptly changed course and slashed its planned maintenance by between 26% and 30% to reduce the likelihood of load-shedding.

Despite this, the power utility could not avoid the power cuts during those weeks.

Stage 3 to stage 6 load-shedding was continuously implemented in the week leading up to Christmas, while the day itself also had load-shedding up to 05:00 in the morning.

This was the first time since 2007 that load-shedding had been implemented on Christmas Day.

The power outages resumed between stage 1 and stage 4 load-shedding the day after Christmas and lasted through the week of New Year’s.

The first brief reprieve would only come in February 2023, the second month of what would be Eskom’s worst year of load-shedding.

However, Eskom could again suspend load-shedding from 14 December 2023 until 2 January 2024.

While its outlook for the festive season looked bleak in mid-November 2023, the power utility brought three large units at Kusile back online with a temporary workaround for a collapsed fuel-gas desulphurisation (FGD) duct.

That added over 2,000MW of capacity that had been unavailable for over a year — including during the 2022/2023 holiday period.

Two of these units will remain online in the coming holidays, while one will be taken down to switch to the repaired FGD system.

From red to green

However, Kusile is not the only power plant contributing additional capacity, so the temporary loss of one of its units is not expected to have a material impact on Eskom’s ability to avoid load-shedding during the holidays.

With the latest available system status outlook in Week 44 of 2024, the risk of load-shedding during the coming holiday period is forecasted to be much lower than in December 2023 and January 2024.

From the week of 16 December 2024 and throughout January 2025, Eskom is anticipating no shortage of demand under its “planned” risk level — where unplanned outages or breakdowns constitute 15,200MW of generating capacity.

This is a significant deviation from the same week a year ago, where Eskom had predicted a shortfall of more than 2,000MW capacity under the planned risk scenario.

Under the more risk-averse “likely” scenario, which assumes 17,200MW of breakdowns, Eskom is still anticipating it will have sufficient generation for the three weeks from 23 December 2024 to 5 January 2024.

One of the biggest factors influencing the overall outlook is that demand is expected to drop to around 24,000MW, a reduction of roughly 3,000MW from the typical level in November and early December.

Eskom has also reduced the planned and likely risk levels by about 3,000MW from last year due to its generating fleet’s significantly improved performance in 2024.

Even if it had kept these risk levels at the previous 18,200MW and 20,200MW levels, its forecast would have shown that generation demand is sufficient in both the planned and likely risk scenarios for the next three months.

The power utility has not implemented load-shedding for nearly a third of the year.

Eskom’s average energy availability factor for the first 44 weeks of 2024 was 60%, compared to 54.69% for the entire 2023.

The annual average unplanned outage factor stood at about 26.77% by week 44, compared with 33.59% in 2023.

The table below shows Eskom’s system status outlook for November, December, and January in Week 44 of 2023 and 2024.

For reference, the colours in the blocks indicate the following:

• Green – Generation capacity sufficient to meet demand
• Yellow — Generation shortfall of 1,000MW or less
• Orange — Generation shortfall of 1,001MW to 2,000MW
• Red — Generation shortfall over 2,001MW

Festive season outlook — Week 44 of 2023

Festive season outlook — Week 44 of 2024