Eskom walking a load shedding tightrope this week
Power utility Eskom needs to keep things together this week as the country’s power grid straddles a fine line between lower and higher levels of load shedding.
The group has a lot of positives working for it, which should keep power demand low and leave more room for lower stages of outages; however, the shutting down of Koeberg Unit 2 on Monday (11 December) means any further breakdowns could push it over the edge.
According to independent energy analyst Pieter Jordaan, Eskom’s announcement that Koeberg Unit 2 will be taken down on Monday – and that it will ramp up planned maintenance – may mean a wider power gap and the likelihood of increased load shedding.
“However, the recent cooler weather, the early arrival of the school holidays and the bonus long weekend means that power demand may start to ebb earlier than usual for this festive season – narrowing the power gap.
“The risks for the coming week are, therefore, finely balanced and highly contingent upon Eskom’s ability to keep breakdowns in check,” he said.
Breakdowns at units over the past few weeks have been stubbornly entrenched at above 30% of capacity, with a slight decline seen in the past week. As long as Eskom can keep these breakdowns contained, load shedding shouldn’t be as much of a worry in the coming weeks.
Minister in the Presidency responsible for Electricity, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, said in a briefing this past weekend that unplanned losses (breakdowns) and partial load losses (the rate at which units are failing and not performing at optimal capacity) combined have been averaging just above 14,000MW.
“To put it into context, we have reached highs of 17,000MW of these losses. If we were to use May as our baseline, we were losing about 17,369MW. Essentially, we are better off by about 3,000MW, and that’s what we’ve been averaging,” he said.
Ramokgopa said that more recently, outages have improved to around 12,000MW. However, Eskom will be using the improved performance to ramp up planned maintenance.
The minister also claimed that improvements were being seen without the excessive use of open cycle gas turbines (OCGTs). Eskom has had to lean heavily on OCGTs in recent months to keep the lights on – however, this resulted in tapped emergency reserves, which almost led to disaster.
After doubling the 2022 record on Monday, 27 November, the blackout meter continued to add 1.3 days this week, increasing the 2023 tally to 72.2 days, or 1,733 blackout hours.
The projection for the whole of 2023 also increased to 76.7 days, or 1,840 blackout hours after the recent power crisis episode, which caused the meter to start correcting towards its linear trend.
Over the past week, the 7-day blackout trend retreated by 9.8 points to 18.2%. The utility could increase its power output after several units were returned from breakdowns and its emergency reserves were repaired. Low demand, gifted the weekend 32 blackout-free hours.
The quarterly blackout trend also responded positively and softened 1.2 points to 14%. It has remained at or above the stage 2-mark for a third consecutive week after spending a rare fortnight below the same mark.
The annual blackout trend gave back the 0.3 points gained last week, keeping above the stage 3 mark at 21.3%. Longer-term load shedding appears stable around stage 3.
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