Eskom, South Africa’s power utility, predicts a significant risk of load-shedding exceeding 2,000MW shortfall between December 2023 and December 2024. The Generation Adequacy Report outlines both planned and likely risk scenarios, projecting persistent challenges in meeting demand and reserves. Recent intensified load-shedding, reaching Stage 6, has raised concerns, with Eskom attributing the crisis to emergency reserve depletion and external factors like a heatwave. Critics argue Eskom’s explanations are insufficient, heightening apprehensions about the country’s energy stability.
Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.
Code red at Eskom
The risk of load-shedding between December 2023 and December 2024 is remarkably high, with Eskom anticipating it will be more than 2,000MW short to meet demand and reserves for at least the next year.
This is according to Eskom’s Generation Adequacy Report for the medium term, which gives insight into the risk of load-shedding based on “planned” and “likely” risk levels.
The outlook covers the 52 weeks from 20 November 2023 to 25 November 2024.
“The maintenance plan included in these assumptions includes a base scenario of outages (planned risk level),” Eskom explained in the report.
Load-shedding gets chaotic
Many South Africans will find the load-shedding outlook unsurprising, as the rotational power cuts have intensified significantly since early November.
After several weeks of low load-shedding stages and several rotational power cut suspensions, Eskom’s generation unit breakdowns climbed to over 17,000MW in early November 2023.
Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, South Africa’s electricity minister, said Eskom “dropped the ball” by allowing breakdowns to increase drastically.
“We have done exceptionally well over a period of three months [but] I think the ball has been dropped here,” said Ramokgopa.
“As a result of these failures, and this is something that is receiving attention, we’ve gone back to about 17,000MW [of breakdowns], and this is totally unacceptable, I must say.”
The increase in unplanned outages resulted in South Africa’s return to Stage 3 load-shedding.
Read More: South Africa urgently needs privatisation for economic revival
However, Eskom’s rotational power cuts intensified further in late November. Load-shedding increased to Stage 4 on 22 November.
The power utility then announced the implementation of Stage 6 load-shedding on Friday, 24 November 2023, with the high level expected to persist until Monday, 27 November.
The utility blamed the increased load-shedding on the loss of five generating units over the past 24 hours and the need to replenish emergency reserves.
Ramokgopa held a media briefing to explain the intensified load-shedding and stated that generation unit breakdowns weren’t primarily to blame.
Instead, he said Eskom had been over-committing its emergency reserves to mitigate even higher stages.
The increase to Stage 6 came as Eskom had to cut back on its pumped storage and open-cycle gas turbine usage to replenish emergency reserves.
“On the back of that cluster of units that had gone out, what it meant is that we had to significantly engage our emergency reserves,” he said.
“For purposes of protecting the grid, we need to ensure that we continue to protect the reserves, so we are not going to engage them at a heightened intensity, and as a result, we don’t have the benefit of the 4,600MW that we would automatically draw from our emergency reserves.”
Eskom Group executive for generation Bheki Nxumalo added that the heatwave experienced in the country at the time had increased demand by about 1,500MW, likely due to increased air conditioner usage.
Energy analyst Chris Yelland also explained that power stations like Matimba, Majuba, Medupi and Kusile rely on dry cooling systems. These power stations are susceptible to variations in temperatures.
In high temperatures, these power stations cannot cool properly and run the risk of overheating. Therefore, their output or power produced is sub-optimal.
However, engineer and energy expert Mthunzi Luthuli said Eskom’s excuses are unacceptable and do not justify implementing stage 6 load-shedding.
“This is not acceptable, blaming the weather we’ve always had historically. We’ve always had warm summers and cold winters,” he said.
“When it’s cold in winter, they tell us it’s cold, and that’s why we have load-shedding. When it’s hot in summer, they tell us it’s hot, and that’s why we have load-shedding. It’s nonsense.”
Read also:
This article was first published on MyBroadband and was republished with permission
