Eskom CEO Dan Marokane<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nEskom said that it has successfully reduced unplanned outages from over 13,000MW entering into the winter period to just over 10,000MW in August, sometimes hitting as low as 7,000MW.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
EAF also reached 66% in August and has improved 10% yearly, with 38 units over 80%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Diesel usage has also steadily declined, it said, falling from around 16.02% load factor in April to just 1.84% in August\u2014well below the allowable limit of 6% set by Nersa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, this does not mean everything is clear and smooth at the utility. Its issues have moved from a national energy crisis to a more localised one, with load rotation becoming the norm for many.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Load reduction differs from load shedding in that it is not a scheduled national outage but a local response (on a community or district level) to overloaded systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It usually occurs in areas with many illegal connections, which overload infrastructure and force utilities to reduce demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The utility said that it aims to cut back instances of load reduction by up to 20% by March 2026, with the longer-term goal to eliminate the practice within two years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, this will be easier said than done, with a multilateral approach needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The group said it will tackle electricity theft and remove over 600,000 illegal connections at the heart of many load reduction issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It will also take on the problems through the installation of 7.2 million smart meters, with around 880,000 already deployed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Eskom said it will also face the wider challenges causing load reduction through network upgrades where necessary and by registering more households for free basic electricity, so households won’t need to set up illegal connections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Power utility Eskom says it expects no load shedding this summer, with its longer two-year plan to eliminate load reductions as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":833368,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9874],"tags":[1164,1165],"class_list":["post-836954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-eskom","tag-load-shedding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=836954"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":836960,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836954\/revisions\/836960"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/833368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=836954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=836954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=836954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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