The only reason South Africa isn’t at stage 5 load shedding right now

Comparing load shedding in January 2024 to January 2023 shows that the only reason the country isn’t experiencing an average of stage 5 load shedding at the moment is due to much lower user demand.

According to the latest blackout statistics compiled by independent energy analyst Pieter Jordaan, South Africa started the year off in a much better energy situation than last year despite frequent outages still being a prominent feature almost every day.

Eskom announced a string of rapid changes to the load-shedding schedule over the weekend, moving from stage 2 to suspensions and back to stage 2 before quickly changing course to a stage 1-suspension-stage 2 structure into the new week.

Jordaan, who has been plotting and analysing the weekly data from the power utility for over a year, noted that South Africa’s last calendar month of no load shedding was January 2022.

After that point, blackout episodes built in intensity until Eskom hit its first full-blown crisis during the June 2022 illegal strikes by workers, leading to the start of near-permanent load shedding in September 2022.

2023 was the worst year for load shedding on record, with the country experiencing outages of 335 of 365 days. Most of the non-load shedding days were experienced over December when demand tanked.

According to Jordaan, the tanking demand has continued into the new year. In fact, this is the most likely cause of the more ‘optimistic’ outlook for the energy situation in 2024, he said.

“A comparison of the first two weeks of 2024 and 2023 shows that both periods posted near identical plant availability (EAF) ratios. Only, in 2024, the blackout rate plummeted by two-thirds, thanks to an 8% drop in utility power demand.”

Jordaan said that if demand over the past three weeks had been on par with last year, the blackout rate would have averaged 33.4% – practically a stage 5-average in outages.

Looking at the energy demand profile for the first two weeks of 2024, Jordaan noted that even though demand is picking up – as is the historical seasonal trend – it is still falling far short of what it was in the past, lagging the baseline by around 1,400MW.

While the significant drop in demand appears to be a lifesaver for Eskom at the moment – sparing the country from worse levels of load shedding – such a significant shift doesn’t come without its own problems.

A permanent loss in user demand will also lead to a significant loss of revenue for Eskom through lost sales.

Jordaan said that the data shows average demand destruction has escalated from 250MW per hour in September 2023 to 1500MW per hour over the past five weeks.

“Without a further escalation, this near-permanent demand loss translates to 13 TWh, or 6.5%, of lost sales for Eskom in 2024,” he said.

The rub is that Eskom is likely to push this loss onto consumers through future electricity price hikes, as the current methodology used allows for a ‘clawback’ on lost sales.

While Eskom and Nersa are in the process of moving to a new methodology – with the latter proposing a system that gets rid of this ‘clawback’ clause’ – this is still some way away from being implemented.

In the meantime, in lieu of any significant improvements to EAF and increased generation capacity, energy users are likely to keep moving to alternative sources like solar and Independent Power Producers (IPPs), cutting demand even more.

Eskom set a target of hitting an EAF of 60% by March 2023 – a target it missed, hitting 60% only once around mid-October 2023. The group has set an EAF target of 65% for March 2024, with current EAF still sitting around 50%.

Read: Here’s the new load shedding schedule for the week ahead