SA has experienced 91 days of load shedding this year, more blackouts expected

Since the start of the current financial year in April 2022, South Africa has experienced more than 70 days of load shedding.

Unplanned outages

Eskom gave a status update to Parliament’s Joint Portfolio Committee on Public Enterprises and Mineral Resources and Energy on Wednesday.

“We had 77 days of load shedding in this financial year, which is quite significant. The last financial year we had 65 [days] and that was the whole year… Now we are not even half way through this year,” Eskom Systems Operator, Isabel Fick said during Eskom’s presentation.

However, load shedding has been implemented for a total of 91 days so far since 1 January 2022.

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Fick said there were 43 days of Stage 2 load shedding alone in the previous financial year – between April 2021 and March 2022.

“We had eight instances of Stage 1 [and] four instances of Stage 3, while Stage 4 [was implemented 10 times],” she further said.

The rolling power cuts, Fick explained, were due to a severe shortage in generation capacity caused by breakdowns at several of its power stations, limited fuel availability at peaking stations and increased unplanned unavailability, among others.

Meanwhile, there were more unplanned outages than Eskom’s scenario planning expected during the Winter period as the utility’s power stations operated above the maximum assumption – 42.5% of the time.

Summer load shedding

Eskom also provided a forecast on load shedding, with the utility expecting more blackouts (Stage 4 being the maximum) in summer.

Fick said Eskom expects that it will have 13 000 megawatts (MW) of unavailable capacity throughout the year.

“The fact is yes, we are expecting more load shedding, however, this is not cast in stone. What you seeing here is literally the worst case scenario and we do move around all the times.

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“If we are not in the stressed scenario on the peak period we then will not see this. Keep in mind that during the summer time, we don’t have a distinct peak as we have in the winter time for the morning and evening peak,” she said.

Eskom further indicated that it plans to add new generation capacity over the next 36 months to reduce the risk of load shedding.

South Africa has currently installed generation capacity of 46 000MW, however, only 60% is available at any given time due to maintenance and unplanned outages.

This means that there’s an electricity shortage of up to 6 000MW.

In July, President Cyril Ramaphosa said Eskom would add new generation capacity “on an urgent basis”.

Ramaphosa said his government’s new measures would improve Eskom’s existing fleet of power stations and increase private sector involvement in generating capacity, among other things.

He also said the measures would transform the electricity sector by allowing businesses and households to invest in solar panels.