Eskom outlines plans to cap summer load-shedding at stage 4

Eskom says it hopes to contain load-shedding at stage 4 during the summer and is banking on achieving this by keeping the unplanned capacity loss factor (UCFL) around 14,500MW.

In this scenario, the country should have 116 days of load-shedding out of 213 days.

If the UCFL — caused by failing units — rises to 16,000MW then the highest stage of load-shedding rises to six, with  187 days of power cuts.

In a worst-case scenario, 17,500MW in UCFL could possibly plunge the country into stage 7 with 211 days of blackouts.

This was the picture painted by the utility's leadership at a briefing on Wednesday at Eskom's Megawatt Park headquarters. Executives provided an update on the state of the system and a forecast for summer.

Acting CEO Calib Cassim led the briefing and was joined by the heads of generation, distribution and transmission Bheki Nxumalo, Monde Bala and Segomoco Scheppers respectively.

This comes a day after electricity minister Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa and Nxumalo led a briefing on updates to the implementation of the energy action plan and provided an overview of the past week's performance.

Reflecting on the winter season, Cassim said there were “many successes and some challenges”.

“We believe that the performance was overall positive compared to the outlook. But we do appreciate and acknowledge that load-shedding's impact on the economy and livelihoods [of South Africans] needs to be addressed in terms of intensity and frequency.

He said that while the utility hadn't achieved the expected targets in terms of reduction of unplanned outages, the trends showed a decline throughout winter.

Outlining the generation recovery plan, Nxumalo said the energy availability factor [EAF] target remained the same from the winter outlook at 65% for the end of the financial year.

Eskom's EAF is now 55%.

“On average, around 60% for the year-to-date and then 70% for the 2025 financial year. So that strategy is what has been approved by the board and that's what we're still committed to do. 

“We have areas of focus to deal with this issue. We have stations that we have told the public are performing well within the Eskom fleet that we need to protect. Those are the likes of Lethabo, Matimba, Peaking and Medupi.”

Nxumalo singled out Medupi specifically for the way the team there turned the situation around and said his department was “taking lessons” from the power station to troubled Kusile.

Kusile was listed among six stations that needed special focus as part of the recovery plan. The others are Tutuka, Duvha, Majuba, Matla and Kendal.

Speaking on Kusile units 1-3, Nxumalo said the utility was “almost done” with constructing the temporary stacks and it was ready to bring unit 3 back online by October 14.

The utility had initially indicated that the first unit would be online by October 31 and the remaining two by November 30.

“I'm quite pleased that the team ... has done exceptionally well there. In June, we said the first unit was going to come in towards the end of November and the last one on December 24 so I'm pleased to say that we are ready to start now. All contracting work is completed. We're just waiting for authorisation to come through in terms of the appeal by both the [environment] department and district department.

“On Tuesday, I indicated that we'd just received feedback from the minister [and from this point] it goes to the district because the licensing of the plant is issued by the local and district municipalities so they are finalising that process. So I'm hopeful that at least by Thursday we should get feedback from the municipalities. Because it's critical, I think the minister of electricity was saying that Kusile is so critical in our recovery,” he said.

Nxumalo spoke about Koeberg, saying: “We have now completed the replacement of all the steam generators at Koeberg.”

Unit 1 is expected to make a return on November 3 but this will have no effect on increasing supply as unit 2 will be taken offline shortly afterwards.

On the demand side, head of distribution Bala outlined the utility's plan to reduce demand by 250MW during the 2024 financial year. This will rely on six key areas: load shifting/clipping, residential load management, energy efficiency, demand response and residential rollout. 

Bala spoke on five other initiatives Eskom was looking into to reduce demand. These are: small-scale embedded generation, the deployment of microgrids, wheeling solutions, standard offers and community co-ops.

Getting into more detail on the winter outlook as well as the prediction for the summer period, head of distribution Scheppers revealed that the country had experienced 55 days of stage 3 load-shedding, 42 days of stage 4 and 39 days at stage 6. There were three days at stage 2 and 14 at stage 5.

Reflecting on summer, he said: “We've put together the analysis looking at 14,500MW up to 17,500MW to assess what would happen if we get into those spaces. And you will have noted, in terms of submissions made by Mr Nxumalo, that a lot of effort is going into returning some of the units that are out, especially Kusile and the projections are that we should be landing between 14,000MW and 15,000MW if those plans deliver.

“The important thing is that the numbers we reflect here are based on mathematical modelling. They are not a projection or prediction, it is merely saying that if you follow the trend this could potentially happen,” he said.

TimesLIVE