![\"\"](\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/hours-of-loadshedding.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThis comparison will worsen even further as 2022 still has three months to go until the end of the year, adding more days of load-shedding to its total.<\/p>\n
Over the past decade, there has been a clear and concerning trend of a rapid increase in load-shedding caused by breakdowns at power plants.<\/p>\n
While there are several important factors related to load-shedding, the most telling indicator is the Energy Availability Factor (EAF) \u2013 which is the difference between the maximum availability and all unavailabilities (PCLF, UCLF & OCLF) expressed as a percentage. This excludes renewables, IPPs and international imports.<\/p>\n
The graph below shows Eskom’s energy availability from 2013 to date, according to Eskom’s integrated annual reports and the estimated EAF for 2022.<\/p>\n
For the year to end-March, the state-owned utility reported an overall EAF of 62%, but load-shedding has intensified since then, with the coal fleet\u2019s EAF dipping well below 60% at times.<\/p>\n EAF for the week ending 16 September saw availability as low as 53.16% amid the commencement of stage 6 load shedding last month, with energy availability for 2022 now estimated to be around 51%.<\/p>\n South Africa\u2019s Integrated Resource Plan of 2019 (IRP 2019), which outlines the technologies needed to ensure supply security to 2030, assumes an EAF of at least 70%, rising to 75% by mid-decade (2025), and a shortfall supply of around 2,000 MW.<\/p>\n The reality, however, is a horror show. The supply deficit is between double and triple than initially planned, with Eskom calculating the shortfall to be between 4,000 MW and 6,000 MW.<\/p>\n Updates from Eskom show how bad the situation has become. Of about 50,000MW of installed capacity on Sunday (1 October 2022), only 26,486MW was available (53%). Meanwhile, demand was closer to 27,430MW.<\/p>\n Things are going to get worse<\/strong><\/p>\n According to the CSIR, the outlook for the next year shows that Eskom will face a shortage of 2,001MW or higher for 49 out of the 52 weeks.<\/p>\n Presenting its system status and outlook to the joint portfolio committee on public enterprises and mineral resources and energy in August, Eskom’s forecast for load shedding over the next few months and extending into 2023 is bleak.<\/p>\n In the group’s baseline scenario of having around 13,000MW of power taken off the grid due to unplanned outages, the power utility presents an optimistic forecast of only a few days of low-stage load shedding through to August 2023.<\/p>\n However, it has so far been unable to meet this already low bar. In its worst-case scenario, where outages exceed 16,000MW, stage 3 and stage 4 load shedding are the daily norm, with Eskom relying on billions of rands’ worth of diesel to keep the blackouts capped.<\/p>\n The harsh reality is that Eskom is physically limited in how much diesel it can use – so even its worst-case scenario figures are distorted. For instance, on some days, it says it can cap load shedding to stage 4 if it can burn through R6.4 billion worth of diesel.<\/p>\n Eskom said that history has shown that it is not possible to use more than R2.4 billion worth of diesel in a month due to the physical limitations of moving the diesel to the OCGT stations, however.<\/p>\n Where its forecast shows a diesel usage greater than this, additional stages of load shedding should be expected, it said.<\/p>\n These periods are highlighted in red below:<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n