Electricity Minister Kgosientsho\u00a0Ramokopga says that increased planned maintenance has intensified load shedding in South Africa, with further outages possibly on the way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
During Winter, Eskom cut its planned maintenance substantially, which it usually does due to the increase in demand following colder temperatures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This was one reason that Eskom could keep load shedding at lower-than-expected levels in winter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We don’t foresee these being long outages, and that’s why we choose to take them out,” the minister added. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“And we’ll continue to ramp up at this scale or even a bit higher in relation to planned outages<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “This is, if you like, a controlled intensity of load shedding to allow us the opportunity to get these machines fixed.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n He added that this unplanned maintenance has kept unplanned outages below 15,000 MW, which is lower than the 17,000 MW in May. <\/p>\n\n\n\n He said that this has reduced the number of unplanned outages to below 15,000MW – it was 17,000MW in May. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Signs of this to come<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhile 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe believe that load shedding will probably return to more severe levels<\/strong> in the second half of the year as large smelters ramp up capacity and Eskom resumes much-needed planned maintenance<\/strong>,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This month will also provide a host of challenges as Eskom returns to summertime tariffs for industries, which is expected to kick up demand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n However, it’s not all doom and gloom, as Eskom’s generation capacity should improve by the end of the year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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