South Africa Enjoys 27 Loadshed-Free Days…and the Future Looks ‘Bright’

Eskom has managed to keep the country loadshed-free for over 26 days…and the future looks bright. The next anticipated loadshedding – known as blackouts outside of South Africa – should only be well after the summer months.

Speaking in Cape Town, Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown says the work of the ‘war room’ set up to tackle the country’s energy challenges has led to Eskom going for over 26 days without implementing load shedding.

Eskom’s acting CEO Brian Molefe has also projected that the country is likely to go without load shedding until March next year.

Eskom has stressed, on their website, however that the system remains vulnerable and that “any extra load or faults in the system may necessitate the need to implement load shedding at short notice.”

Customers are urged to reduce their electricity usage throughout the day, especially during the peak periods from 06:00 to 10:00 and 17:00 to 21:00.

Commercial customers – particularly shopping centres and office blocks – can also make a big difference by switching off non-essential lights and not leaving office equipment such as photocopiers and computers in standby mode after hours.

The Minister and the CEO, accompanied by other officials who are part of the war room, made their announcements whilst giving a progress report on the implementation of the five point plan that the Cabinet approved when establishing the war room in December.

“Today [marks 27 days] since we have not had any load shedding and it does not mean that we are out of the woods. It is in the same week too, and I am very grateful to the CE and his team, that Medupi Unit six has come on full commercialisation,” said Brown.

“This means that 800 Megawatts is on the grid and at the same time, we have had 900 Megawatts from Koeberg 2 and within that period, we have not seen any load shedding,” she said.

The Minister said load shedding has had an enormous impact on the lives of citizens and on the economy.

“I really want to assure citizens that through our integrated resource plan, we are working to intensify the diversification of the country’s energy mix,” she said.

The government’s five point plan is divided into various components. The one aspect – supply side management – deals with immediate measures to improve the maintenance of plants and operational practices, co-generation, gas power generation and additional sources of supply and sourcing more power from independent power producers.

This is a short to medium intervention aimed at limiting the risk of load shedding.

The second aspect – the demand side management – looks at finances and procurement, skills and regulatory issues, long-term issues with short-term implications and communications.

The Minister said the war room has made progress on some aspects of the five point plan.

“At the end of March, because we were in the war room, the Department of Energy, the Department of Public Enterprises and Eskom signed an agreement of about 800 Megawatts of co-generation.”

“Work is underway to ensure that new energy is continuously brought on to the power grid through the various projects,” she said.

Eskom projects no load shedding until March 2016

Meanwhile, Eskom’s acting CEO Brian Molefe said the power grid’s installed capacity stood at 43500 Megawatts in May 2015.

With the peak demand standing at 32180 Megawatts at the time, he said the power utility was forced to implement load shedding due to a shortfall of 2180 Megawatts after 6500 Megawatts of power was lost due to planned maintenance, while 7000 Megawatts un unplanned maintenance, or plant break downs, brought the system under a lot of strain.

He said the excess capacity o Megawatts over the past month, Eskom was able to avoid load shedding.

“Installed capacity is now 44262 Megawatts from 43500 Megawatts.

“We had planned maintenance of 4608 Megawatts and we had unplanned maintenance of 6757 Megawatts.

In addition, we had available to us the gas turbines of 2244 Megawatts that we did not switch on the 2nd of September because demand was only at 30 653 Megawatts.

Molefe said Eskom’s capacity outlook was positive, and added that the power utility was unlikely to implement load shedding from September this year until March 2016.

“Between September and March, our projected demand will actually stay [within the system’s available generating capacity].

“As long as projected demand is [within the available generating capacity], we do not have load shedding.”

Sources – SAnews.gov.za, Eskom.co.za