Eskom narrowly dodges Stage 3 load-shedding

Energy expert at Forest Energy Solutions Matthew Cruise says Eskom has avoided load-shedding on several occasions in January 2025 by burning large amounts of diesel.

Speaking to Cape Talk, Cruise warned that South Africa’s power supply isn’t as stable as the public has been led to believe, with Eskom avoiding load-shedding as high as Stage 3 in early 2025.

“We’ve been 300 days without load-shedding. Yes, that is the case, but they’ve been doing everything in their power and spending as much diesel as they can to keep that narrative alive,” he said.

“I see Eskom fired 2,600MW of diesel on the ninth of January, basically keeping us out of Stage 3 load-shedding.”

“They didn’t do the same last year in January when we were dipping in and out of Stages 1, 2, and 3. So, it seems like they’re following a different philosophy when using diesel turbines,” he added.

MyBroadband asked Eskom about Cruise’s statements but it did not provide feedback by publication.

Cruise noted that the power utility had also avoided Stage 2 load-shedding on Friday, 17 January, and Saturday, 18 January, by burning diesel.

“I can take a guess that they’re playing to requests of the government to keep the narrative alive,” he added.

However, Cruise predicts that this philosophy could change with the announcement by the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) of its approved electricity tariff adjustments.

Eskom applied for a price hike of 36.15% for the 2025/26 financial year in late August 2024.

Cruise warned that this approach of burning diesel to prevent the return of load-shedding would likely lead to the state-owned power utility asking for exponentially higher price adjustments each year.

“The burning of diesel is ten times more expensive than coal power station use. In terms of the provision of diesel to keep the lights on, it does mean the price of electricity will become exponentially more expensive if they keep doing this,” he said.

“I do think that things are going to change when Nersa announces the price of electricity increase, and then, depending on whether Eskom’s happy or not, it will then change its philosophy.”

Cruise indicated that Eskom may be less willing to burn copious amounts of diesel to keep the lights on if it is unhappy with Nersa’s approved price adjustments.

“So that means we might see the return of load-shedding in either Q1 or Q2 of this year, given that we are currently not able to meet our energy demand with normal energy sources,” he added.

Eskom diesel consumption surge

In mid-January 2025, the state-owned power said its use of OCGTs surged at the start of the year as it worked to avoid load-shedding.

Between Friday, 3 January and 10 January 2025, generating unit breakdowns were slightly lower than last year, necessitating higher reliance on emergency generation capacity.

“Over the past seven days, the average total unplanned outages stood at 14,155MW, reflecting a slight improvement compared to the 14,611MW recorded during the same period last year,” said Eskom.

“This performance is primarily due to delays in returning some units undergoing planned maintenance to service combined with the loss of generating units as a result of boiler tube leaks.”

Unplanned outages reached 14,077MW on Friday, 10 January — 1,077MW higher than the summer 2024 base case.

“To meet demand under these circumstances, reliance was placed on a higher open-cycle gas turbine load factor for the period under review, which has since decreased,” said Eskom.

It added that 4,150MW was expected to return to service in the near future.

The power utility explained that the strategic use of peaking stations, including pumped storage and OCGTs, is crucial in managing electricity demand during peak times.

It reported spending approximately R9.39 billion on OCGTs between 1 April 2024 and 9 January 2025, generating 1,527.02GWh.

“This is significantly lower than the R25.67 billion spent during the same period last year, which produced 4,094.48GWh,” Eskom added.