Eskom boosts energy availability factor to 60%

A notable improvement in Eskom’s generation capacity in the last week resulted in its energy availability factor (EAF) — the amount of energy available compared to installed capacity — rise on June 2 by seven percentage points to 60%, a level last seen in September 2022.

This has meant there have been much lower stages of load-shedding or no load-shedding at all on some days. As one percentage point on average represents 477MW, an additional 3,339MW of energy — or three stages of load-shedding — was generated.

Minister of electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa provided this information in his weekly update on the implementation of government’s Energy Action Plan. He stressed that while progress had been made, the country would still face a difficult winter in terms of electricity supply.

Eskom announced Friday that stage three load-shedding would be implemented from 4pm until midnight and thereafter stage one load-shedding would be implemented from 5am-4pm on Saturday.

Ramokgopa said that there had been a big improvement in generation due to the reduction in unplanned loss to less than 16,000MW from 18,000MW.

Planned maintenance has been reduced to about 2,500MW and winter weather conditions in the coastal areas meant that generation available from wind power has increased.

“A major contributor to the performance we are seeing is that demand has not peaked to levels we had envisaged,” the minister said, though he cautioned that demand is likely to rise in the weeks ahead.

Peak demand had averaged less than 29,000MW compared to the approximate 30,000MW projected in the first week of June.

“If we can keep up energy savings from demand-side measures we can sustain this trend and reduce the severity of load-shedding,” Ramokgopa said.

The plan is to increase the load factor of open-cycle gas turbines to over 20% and thereby reduce load-shedding by about two stages.

Ramokgopa said maintaining the trend would depend on the reliability of Eskom’s generation units.

He remarked on the healthy pipeline of private sector investment in renewable energy projects, but pointed out that using this energy would depend on grid access.

The minister said a legal mechanism was necessary to address projects that did not use their right to access the grid, preventing others who were ready to connect to the grid from doing so. A prescribed time limit on exercising the right should be applied rather than it being open-ended as at present. The aim was to get extra megawatts onto the grid as soon as possible.

Efforts were being made to accelerate energy projects by helping them to clear regulatory hurdles as quickly as possible. Time frames for the various regulatory requirements have been reduced, Ramokgopa said.

He will meet his Mozambiquan counterpart Monday to access a minimum of 80MW of power generated by a powership.

The minister will also visit Vietnam to learn how to quickly expand grid capacity, and China to discuss the supply of solar panels and components.

Eskom GM of generation Eric Shunmagum said generation capacity was at 29,670MW, including the open-cycle gas turbines. Two units at Majuba and Matla power stations had to be shut down on Friday.

ensorl@businesslive.co.za