‘More time needed’: Experts cautiously optimistic about Eskom’s long-term stability

In a significant turn of events, Eskom is on the brink of ushering in a new era of hope and prosperity for the nation if it continues to build its power generation capacity and keep load shedding at bay, energy experts say.

Eskom has displayed “sustained, improved performance” for the past couple of weeks, leading all to believe there’s still hope for the power utility.

‘Not out of the woods’

However, according to Wits University’s School of Electrical and Information Engineering’s Prof Willie Cronje, it’s not out of the woods.

“There’s still a lot of maintenance that needs to be done on the transmission lines and things, which isn’t that visible,” he said.

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“I think we’ll still need some time to really get up to a good standard, but in terms of generation and availability of electricity, it’s quite good.”

This is after Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa yesterday provided another update on the implementation of the Energy Action Plan and said an exceptional amount of work was being done and progress was being made in ending the country’s energy crisis.

Ramokgopa said that the hard work was slowly but surely paying off, because “what do the numbers tell us? Outside of the fact that our lights are on for most of the hours of the day, we have seen that we have come out of a period of sustained no load shedding.

“That’s significant at multiple levels. It’s significant psychologically because we are beginning to illustrate that it’s possible for us to come out of load shedding,” he added.

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“Since we came into office, we have not had a sustained period of load shedding.”

He also noted that the last time he briefed the country on Eskom’s performance he indicated that in their calculations and summation, the power utility had turned a corner – “although we are not out of the woods yet”.

“But we are beginning to show sustained, improved performance over an extended period of time. This is good news in that it is an affirmation and validation of the work that the team is doing at Eskom,” he said.

Eskom’s EAF improves

Cronje noted that Eskom has improved its coal power station fleet’s weekly energy availability factor (EAF) to 60% for the first time in more than a year, concurring with Eskom generation manager Eric Shumugam.

“I can confirm that from 16-22 August 2023, we reached 60% in the weekly EAF. If you look at the past three weeks, we’ve trended from 57 to 60%,” he said.

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Shumagam said the improvement had helped Eskom reduce its open-cycle gas turbine usage, which was good news for the utility’s budget.

‘Situation very promising’

Energy expert Chris Yelland praised Eskom for improving the EAF as a very good sign. However, he warned that the electricity grid could have a good or a bad week and a good or a bad month “at any time”.

“The situation is looking very promising. We have reason to hope things are improving. Let’s hope this is the start of a new-found stability,” he said.

Like many other South Africans, Yelland also said he was hoping that the electricity situation would continue to improve.

Meanwhile, Eskom has announced another day of uninterrupted power countrywide, extending the suspension of load shedding.

ALSO READ: ‘Not yet out of the woods, but SA beginning to bear fruits’ – Ramokgopa

The utility noted it could suspend load shedding as its fleet had been performing well and its emergency reserves had fully recovered. Load shedding will be implemented in the evenings from today until further notice.

“Thereafter, load shedding will be suspended from 5am until 4pm, followed by stage 1 load shedding from 4pm until 5am on Thursday,” Eskom spokesperson Daphne Mokwena said.

“This pattern will be repeated daily until further notice. Breakdowns are at 13 559MW, while planned maintenance is at 4 765MW of generation capacity.”

– reitumetsem@citizen.co.za