Moody’s warns electricity supply will remain highly constrained
Despite extra capacity from Medupi and Kusile, provision will be eased only moderately with decommissioning of older units
SA’s electricity supply will remain extremely constrained until the mid-2020s, Moody’s Investors Service said in a report on the electricity market on Tuesday. The report comes as the country faces a third consecutive day of load shedding as Eskom lost the battle to keep up with electricity demand, forcing it to drop customers from the grid to avoid it tripping. Eskom’s reserve margin has been eroded by unplanned breakdowns of its plants, leaving only 64% of its units available (known as the energy availability factor) to dispatch electricity. The Moody’s report says that despite the addition of new capacity to the grid — about 6,700MW from new power stations Medupi and Kusile and from other sources — the decommissioning of some of Eskom’s older units will mean the supply is only moderately eased. It also warns that new renewable capacity will have lower load factors as solar and wind energy is variable and new capacity from other installations “could be subject to delays or poor pe...
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