Eskom gives winter load shedding update

Power utility Eskom has again warned that the national grid will be under severe strain in the coming months – though it is working to mitigate the shortfall in demand as best it can.

Presenting an update on the grid and progress being made on the Energy Action Plan on Friday (5 May), the group said its generation capacity is still severely constrained, with thousands of megawatts offline due to various issues.

This includes units offline at Kusile and Medupi, Koeberg Unit 1 still undergoing life-extension, and a multitude of other trips and outages.

Some of these lost megawatts will only be able to be recovered over the next year or so, with the group targeting 3,115MW to return by March 2024. However, assuming an energy availability factor of 60%, this will only translate to 1,869MW realised in actual energy to the grid.

Until these megawatts can be recovered, the country will be struggling with severe shortages, with the Unplanned Capability Loss Factor (UCLF) and Operational Capability Loss Factor (OCLF) well over the planned assumptions set last year.

UCLF refers to the generation units taken offline for unplanned outages, while OCLF refers to generation units taken offline for outages caused by things that are outside of the unit’s manager’s control. Both of these factors result in megawatts being unavailable to the grid.

In Eskom’s last system outlook, it forecast most of its load shedding stages on base outages of 13,000MW, with the ‘worst case scenario’ being 16,500MW offline. According to the data presented on Friday, UCLF and OCLF are expected to take between 14,000MW and 15,200MW offline in the next three months.

“It’s going to be a very tough winter,” the group said.

The group said it is making some recoveries – a 300MW recovery from Tutuka 3 was realised in April 2023, with another 675MW expected to be recovered in May. However, most recoveries are anticipated later in the year, long after winter has passed.

This affirms what many analysts and energy experts have been saying: there is no short-term solution that will spare the country from a difficult winter.

Eskom said it is busy finalising a plan for winter, which will be presented once approved.

In the meantime, an appeal was put out by the Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) that South Africans work with Eskom and the government at large to manage demand. “Let’s tighten demand to make winter less traumatic for us,” it said.

Given that there is no way for Eskom to boost electricity supply in the coming months, the only way to mitigate disaster in winter is for energy demand to come down.

Eskom has made a huge push to try and manage load shedding through demand-side management (DSM), which would see the power utility try to exert more control over energy consumption from industry, business and residents.

Through DSM, Eskom hopes to try to curb 1,500MW of demand.

This, it said, would be achieved by targeting easy wins like geysers and lightbulbs while also expanding its DSM contracts with industries and businesses.

“The effective implementation of the DSM programmes could create a win-win situation – reducing pressure on the power system and enabling consumers to realise cost savings by being more energy conscious and reducing their consumption without affecting business productivity or quality of life,” the group said.

Eskom said it has already made some strides in a range of DSM initiatives, including energy efficiency, demand response, distributed generation, and energy storage. Through DSM contracts, the power utility has managed to avoid escalating load shedding beyond stage 6, nationally.

Read: Eskom has a plan to cut load shedding – and it has already spared South Africa from stage 8