Eskom clings to hope of improving generation performance this year

Eskom chair Mpho Makwana reaffirmed the struggling power utility’s ambition to achieve 65% generation efficiency by the end of March next year.

The utility’s first target, as part of the generation recovery plan, was to achieve power output of 60% by the end of March next year. However, as the country increasingly finds itself at stage 6 load-shedding the energy availability factor for the generation fleet was hovering at around 53% for 2023.

Achieving its 65% target by next March would require a 23% improvement in output performance across the generation fleet.

The Eskom fleet energy availability factor (a measure of electricity output as a share of total installed generation capacity) continued its declining trend in 2022, with an average energy availability factor (EAF) of 58.1%, compared to the EAF of 61.7% for 2021 and 65% for 2020, according to the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).

Makwana, speaking on Monday at a national indaba on energy demand side management organised by the National Energy Crisis Committee (Necom), said the Eskom board saw improving the performance of the generation fleet as a central part of a broader turnaround programme. Ultimately the goal was to improve the EAF of the entire generation fleet to 70% over the next three years.

Achieving the 65% target would rely, to some extent, on recovering the roughly 2,100MW from three units at Kusile power station that have been offline since October after the collapse of the flue duct in unit one. It also aims to bring online unit 5 at Kusile which will add roughly about 800MW to the grid.

“We are working around the clock to ensure that come 30 March 2024 we achieve that 65%. This will take us into the next cycle of achieving 70% EAF by March 2025,” said Makwana.

Newly appointed head of generation Bheki Nxumalo would act as the “champion” of Eskom achieving these EAF targets and assuring that the utility moved closer to stability and eliminating load-shedding, he said.

Makwana said that the board was “quite advanced” at shortlisting candidates to fill the position left vacant by André de Ruyter’s abrupt exit in February.

The list has been narrowed down to five candidates, he said.

Interim CEO Calib Cassim, who was also speaking at the indaba in Johannesburg, said Eskom needed to focus on solutions that could be implemented in the next six months when “the system will be extremely tight as we [go through the] winter period”.

Eskom, said Cassim, has launched a national demand management initiative which could recover capacity of about 1,500MW — this would cut load-shedding by more than one full stage. However, Eskom believed the potential to free up megawatts through demand management was much greater.

Rudi Dicks, manager of projects in the presidency, who leads the Necom secretariat said at the indaba that the two key interventions in the plan was fixing Eskom plant performance and “getting more megawatts on the grid” which relied partly on electricity recovery through demand management.

Necom’s overall plan is to recover and add about 8,800MW of capacity to electricity supply during 2023 and another 8,100MW is 2024. In line with Eskom’s planning, about 1,500MW of this is to be recovered through demand response management.

Necom is also hoping to see private sector embedded generation projects add 3,700MW to the grid over the next two years and the repairs and completion of all units at Medupi and Kusile was set to add 4,400MW.

erasmusd@businesslive.co.za