Warning over “end” of load-shedding

Energy expert Mohamed Madhi believes South Africa could see the return of load-shedding in 2025, even if Eskom sustained its improved performance.

Eskom’s generation division unexpectedly boosted the average energy availability factor (EAF) of its power station fleet to around 60% in 2024, compared with roughly 55% in 2023.

It was the first time since 2018 that the power utility had improved its EAF year-on-year.

On average, it had over 2,000MW more capacity available in 2024, roughly the same amount of power shed during two stages of load-shedding.

In August 2024, the power utility’s spokesperson, Daphne Mokwena, said if Eskom’s EAF reached 70%, it would officially mean the end of load-shedding.

She explained Eskom would then have reached a point where its availability exceeded peak demand during the winter, when its grid experienced significant strain.

Eskom only achieved an average 70% EAF during one week in mid-2024.

It would have to drastically improve the figure to reach its target of 65% average EAF for its financial year ending March 2025, never mind hitting 70%.

Madhi told MyBroadband that it was definitely too early to predict the end of load-shedding, even if Eskom’s performance improvements continued.

He stressed two other key reasons Eskom was able to keep the lights on in 2024 — behind-the-meter rooftop solar installations and a slowdown in economic activity.

While rooftop solar could continue reducing the country’s reliance on peaking power stations during the day, an economic recovery could impact Eskom’s ability to provide reliable electricity.

Reduced business activity — particularly mining and factory operations — significantly reduced peak and average demand on Eskom’s grid.

According to Eskom’s system status update for Week 49 of 2024, the utility recorded annual energy demand of 189,630GWh between 1 January and 8 December 2024. This was about 3% lower than over the same period in 2023.

The highest peak demand in 2024 was also around 1,000MW lower than in 2023, which already had a 1,000MW lower peak than 2022.

However, South Africa’s business environment improved significantly during the second half of the year.

The rand strengthened, inflation eased, and the Reserve Bank cut interest rates. These developments suggest greater growth in the year ahead, which would put more strain on Eskom’s grid.

Investec expects South Africa’s gross domestic product (GDP) to increase from 1.1% to 1.9% in 2025.

Madhi believes that an expansion of 2% to 3% would be enough to necessitate the reintroduction of load-shedding.

“I think the moment we have even the semblance of some decent economic growth, we are going to have load-shedding,” Madhi said.

Eskom’s week-on-week residual demand figures already show a closer correlation between 2023 and 2024’s demand in the second half of 2024, when South Africa’s economy started improving.

The power utility’s system status outlook for Week 49 of 2024 showed that it would likely be short of supply to meet demand for most of 2025.

That being said, the situation looked significantly better than at the same time last year.

In December 2023, Eskom had anticipated it would be over 2,000MW short to meet demand for the entire 2024.

That turned out to be grossly inaccurate, suggesting that even Eskom had not expected its generation to improve or demand to decline so drastically.

Below is a comparison of Eskom’s 52-week system status outlooks for Week 49 of 2023 and 2024.

For reference, the colours used indicate the following:

• Green — Capacity sufficient to meet demand
• Yellow — Capacity less than 1,000MW short of meeting demand
• Orange — Capacity 1,001MW to 2,000MW short to meet demand
• Red — Capacity over 2,001MW short to meet demand

Madhi also said although Eskom’s EAF was better, the long-term performance of its ageing fleet would remain an issue.

“I think we should be careful to never call it a high EAF because it’s only high if you have sufficient spinning reserves and you can cater for growth,” Madhi said.

“If you have a very old car and you haven’t looked after it for a long time, and now recently you’ve done the last two or three services on the car, do you think it can carry on running forever?”

“The answer is clearly ‘no’ because you haven’t maintained it the way should have done in the first place, you have just done a little bit of catchup maintenance.”

Madhi said that the outlook for load-shedding in 2025 will depend heavily on whether Eskom is able to bring Kusile Unit 6 and Medupi Unit 4 online.

Unit 6 was set to be commissioned by the end of 2024, while Medupi Unit 4 is slated to come back online by the end of March 2025, six months later than its original return-to-service estimate following a devastating hydrogen explosion in August 2021.

These two units will add roughly another critical 1,600MW of generation capacity to the country’s grid.