Eskom explains why it blocked a private solar producer from ‘voiding’ load shedding

Private energy distributor Rural Maintenance Free State (RFS) says it has no alternative but to switch off a portion of its solar farm during the day from Friday (21 April) onwards after losing a court appeal against Eskom.

The Johanneburg High Court this week dismissed the appeal based on technicalities, effectively barring Rural Maintenance from using its own load shedding schedules for Frankfort in the Free State.

Because of this, the group said it would no longer be allowed to lessen the negative effects of load shedding when the sun is shining and will have to “dump” unused solar energy while parts experience load shedding.

Eskom, however, said this was misleading, and that it had to stop the producer from “voiding” load shedding when it wasn’t allowed to.

Rural Maintenance had been granted permission by Eskom to implement self-load shedding in the region from January 2023. Under this agreement, the private company bought electricity from four solar farms in the region at a lower cost and supplied it to the Mafube Local Municipality.

This was done in line with Nersa regulations and includes a code of practice designed to ensure fair implementation of load shedding and to protect the integrity of the national electricity grid, Eskom said.

Through the use of solar farms, the area would have alternative load shedding schedules compared to the rest of the nation.

Rural Maintenance said that on days of peak performance, it was able to void load shedding altogether. This, however, triggered a response from Eskom, which raised a dispute.

In a statement following the ruling, the embattled power utility said that Rural Maintenance simply could not cover the full load of the municipality through the solar solutions, and without batter backups, households were still reliant on Eskom’s grid power.

Despite this, Eskom said that the power producer introduced its own term of “voiding”, which saw the group move outside of the approved load shedding schedules.

“Eskom repeatedly rejected this proposal and attempted to help RFS understand why this is unacceptable and in violation of (the regulations). It is at this stage that Rural Maintenance opted to institute legal processes against Eskom,” it said.

Eskom said the voiding practice was dangerous to the grid because, in the case of Frankfort, the generation capacity of the solar plant is not sufficient to cover all electricity needs of the town during load shedding.

“Even during daytime hours when the plant is running at optimal operation, a portion of the town’s electricity requirements are still supplied by Eskom. As in the rest of the country, the Eskom-supplied electricity to Frankfort is also subject to load shedding,” it said.

The group said that the generation of the plants is already included as part of the town’s normal load profile, so the generation cannot be offset against load shedding. Therefore, RFS is non-compliant to the agreement.

“The PV plant in Frankfort has no standby capability to offset total demand, thus the plant’s output forms part of the system base load, and Frankfort remains subjected to load shedding.”

In court, Eskom argued that circumstances like Frankfort’s on a larger scale could prevent the company from fulfilling its duty to manage the grid and could have catastrophic consequences for the country.

Electricity dumping

CEO of Rural Maintenance, Chris Bosch, said that the company was ‘in the dark’ over the real reason behind Eskom’s stance, but said that the group would be left with no choice but to dump ‘extra’ electricity because of the dispute.

Eskom also denied that this was the case, saying that it has not placed any restrictions on how the group uses its self-generated electricity.

“Eskom welcomes the use of electricity from independent power producers that can assist in alleviating load shedding,” it said.

“What Eskom requires from RFS as a responsible participant in the national grid is to comply with the requirements of the Code of Practice in order to protect the national electricity network in the interest of the country as a whole.”

Bosch said the group was disappointed with the outcome of the court case – especially when there is no negative impact on the national grid.

“The sole reason provided by the Honourable Judge in his judgement relates to the fact that the Municipality decided not to get involved in the legal matter,” said Bosch.

“We have no doubt that should the Municipality have placed the needs of its community at the forefront, a different result may have been forthcoming. We can only hope there was no political meddling from outside of Mafube,” said the company.

Rural Maintenance will make a concerted effort to continue to engage both Eskom and the National Energy Regulator of South Africa in an attempt to try and understand Eskom’s reluctance to support Rural’s initiative, said Bosch.

“Eskom has, however, lost a unique opportunity to gather factual evidence within a controlled environment to make informed future decisions which could have had a tremendous positive impact on South Africa as a whole,” said the CEO.

Read: Eskom blocks private producer from cutting load shedding