Brighter festive season: Load shedding improvements are ‘permanent’

The lights will be on more regularly by the end of the year, with less load shedding anticipated this festive season as the demand for electricity decreases and planned maintenance of lost units increases, according to the Minister of Electricity, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa.

Ramokgopa said there was a significant and positive improvement in generational capacity over the past two weeks.

He said consumers might dodge stage 4 load shedding this summer, should the grid continue to improve.

The improvement in the performance of generation units was permanent, he believed, and ongoing maintenance efforts were finally paying off.

Ramokgopa said the addition of three units from Kusile power station would further improve the power supply.

“We know our municipalities owe Eskom upwards of R64 billion and that figure is increasing – the increase is over R4 billion, and there’s no sign of it stopping,” he said.

“It’s a major hole in the Eskom revenue.” Ramokgopa said part of Eskom’s failure to upgrade infrastructure was due to poor revenue collection and debt by municipalities.

“This is undermining the liquidity of Eskom because Eskom has to recover the cost associated with generation and the reticulation and distribution of electricity.”

Ramokgopa said illegal connections were another issue which kept many communities in the dark, outside of the load shedding schedule.

“In addition to posing immediate physical danger, it could result in people and children being electrocuted. We have seen the number of fires that have happened due to this in major urban centres,” he said.

Illegal connections continued to strain the grid.

“We know there are households and communities who are unable to pay, but all municipalities have dispensation in place to help the poor,” he said.

“Some industries also draw from the grid but fail in their obligations to pay the municipality and Eskom.”

As long as there are issues with the distribution of power and illegal connections, there will not be continuous power.

“We are beginning to get to a stage where we can have full days of no load shedding. “Some parts of the country don’t experience that due to illegal connections,” he said.

The return to service of Kusile units 3 and 2 this month and next, and the addition of unit 5 to the grid for the first time in December, would add a potential 2 400 megawatts of power to the system.

“We are beginning to register progress and turning the corner,” he said. “We will see significant improvement by the end of the year.

“Eskom has indicated at the peak of their planned maintenance, we would be sitting on 7 000MW. Last week we were averaging 5 381MW.

“This is significant compared to the winter period (of) 2 500MW, so we have doubled it.”

Ramokgopa said they were seeing an improvement in the unplanned loss of units. “In August when we reached stage 6 (load shedding).

“We referred to the shortterm pain versus long-term gain. I want to congratulate the team because we have begun to see the results.

“Eskom’s summer outlook indicated the unplanned capacity loss factor should be on 14 500MW and when we look at the week that was, we were sitting at about 14 100MW,” he said.

Ramokgopa said there were days where they recorded an average below 14 000MW. “Even before the return of the Kusile units, we are surpassing those projections.

“It is important for us to ensure the system becomes reliable and lessens the intensity of load shedding and, ultimately, addresses the monster that is load shedding,” he said.

“As the demand comes down we are using the opportunity to increase planned maintenance and we are already starting to see improvements,” he said.

Ramokgopa said Eskom’s failure to upgrade its infrastructure was partially caused by the poor revenue collection.