Fiscal support from Treasury helps Eskom ramp up maintenance

Eskom has managed to claw back 3,510MW, has seen an improvement in the energy availability factor (EAF) and ramped up planned maintenance between January 2023 and January 2024.

This is according to electricity minister Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, who provided an analysis on the performance of the national grid over the 12 months.

Ramokgopa was speaking on Monday during a briefing on the implementation of the energy action plan.

South Africa is rotating between load-shedding stages 2 and 3 until further notice.

Providing an overview of the grid's performance, Ramokgopa noted the “trendline is in the positive”.

“The first thing is that we're seeing improvement in the EAF. When I talk EAF, I talk to two major variables, namely the rate at which units are failing on their own and the efficiency of units.

“Those that are not failing and are remaining on load, are they performing closer to what is their designed capacity?” he said.

“We had said there has to be a bit of science in how we want to confront this question of improving the EAF. What the team at Eskom did in relation to the installed capacity of the units and the areas where we think we can derive maximum opportunity if we were to fix them. We were able to isolate six units for particular attention.”

These were at Kusile, Kendal, Matla, Majuba, Duvha and Tutuka.

As a result of the intervention, Ramokgopa said, Eskom was able to get back 3,510MW of generating capacity over the 12 months.

“These interventions are not complete. There's additional work we must do at Tutuka, Kendal, Matla and the other power stations. At Kusile we were successful at returning three units that had gone out and we have synchronised unit 5. Towards the end of the year, unit 6 will come on stream.

Speaking about the planned maintenance carried out, Ramokgopa said this was possible through the “fiscal support” provided by Treasury. This allowed the utility to ramp up maintenance to 9,000MW between December 2023 and January 2024. This is when schools and big industry were closed for the festive season.

This was about 6,000MW more than the planned maintenance done during the winter period, he said.

“As a result of that, we took out on average 18% of the generation capacity and that 18% was placed on planned maintenance,” he said.

Ramokgopa said while load-shedding remained undesirable and higher stages “unacceptable”, the Eskom team had managed to keep power cuts below stage 4 on average during the summer period despite a projection during the presentation on the summer outlook that it would hover around that stage.

“What is the next statement I'm making regarding the 12 months that we're talking about? It's that the trendline is positive. What are those positives? That the unplanned capacity load factor or reliability of units is coming down.

“We were averaging at about 17,000MW, now we're averaging around 14,000MW,” he said.

Ramokgopa also touched on new generation capacity, saying an update would be provided on the progress.

“We'll also occasion a briefing that talks to new generation capacity because you can't over-rely on Eskom's performance alone. You need new generation capacity. The president has announced reforms on the generation side and we've seen significant uptake from the private sector. We know [through] studies done by Eskom and the SA energy association that there's a pipeline of about 66GW sitting with the private sector. The only constraint there is on the transmission side.

“Once we finalise discussions on the transmission side, we must look at how we're going to configure the financing. We're closer to finding that structure on financing. You'll see we'll be ramping up investment on the financing side.”

TimesLIVE