This is why South Africa is in stage 4 load shedding – and why it could get worse
Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokopga says that increased planned maintenance has intensified load shedding in South Africa, with further outages possibly on the way.
During Winter, Eskom cut its planned maintenance substantially, which it usually does due to the increase in demand following colder temperatures.
This was one reason that Eskom could keep load shedding at lower-than-expected levels in winter.
In the last week, however, Eskom has upped load shedding to stage 4 following a regular daily rotation of stage 1 and 3 load shedding.
Ramokopga said that this was due to planned maintenance increasing from roughly 2,500 MW in May to about 6,500 MW in the last week.
Although the Minister acknowledged that the increase in maintenance will intensify load shedding, he said that it is paramount that generation units that need maintenance be taken offline.
“We don’t foresee these being long outages, and that’s why we choose to take them out,” the minister added.
“And we’ll continue to ramp up at this scale or even a bit higher in relation to planned outages.”
“This is, if you like, a controlled intensity of load shedding to allow us the opportunity to get these machines fixed.”
He added that this unplanned maintenance has kept unplanned outages below 15,000 MW, which is lower than the 17,000 MW in May.
He said that this has reduced the number of unplanned outages to below 15,000MW – it was 17,000MW in May.
Signs of this to come
Nedbank said that the better-than-expected energy situation in Winter may be coming to an end, as the underlying conditions at Eskom have not improved.
“While the shift to solar energy among households and businesses is promising, it is not yet big enough to eliminate the electricity shortage,” the bank said.
“We believe that load shedding will probably return to more severe levels in the second half of the year as large smelters ramp up capacity and Eskom resumes much-needed planned maintenance,” it said.
This month will also provide a host of challenges as Eskom returns to summertime tariffs for industries, which is expected to kick up demand.
However, it’s not all doom and gloom, as Eskom’s generation capacity should improve by the end of the year.
For instance, three units at Kusile should come online around November 2023, adding almost 3,000 MW to the grid. Unit 1 at Koeberg Nuclear Power station will also come online in November, cutting load shedding by roughly one stage.
The Minister added that over 6,000 MW of renewable energy has also been added to the grid via Independent Power Producers, with a roughly combined 12,000 MW expected to be added to the grid once all preferred bidders have completed their projects.
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