Eskom execs say end of load shedding close but two problems keep them up at night

Eskom has highlighted some major operational improvements in the past year and does not expect to see load shedding implemented this summer.

Eskom chairperson Mteto Nyati and Group CEO Dan Marokane revealed this at the utility’s state of the business and summer outlook media briefing on Monday.

They said, however, that if electricity consumption increases, for instance due to rain or heat affecting power stations, South Africa will “at most” go to stage 2.

Nine challenges facing Eskom

Nyati said there are nine systemic problems Eskom is facing, with three being operational, three financial and three about sustainability.

These are listed below with what Nyati described as their solutions:

Nyati said although it looks like South Africa is reaching the end of load shedding “we should not get the impression everything is hunky-dory”.

These problems persist and Eskom is working on interventions to resolve them.

Nyati did narrow down two problems that keep Eskom leaders up at night.

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Municipalities fail to pay Eskom

The money municipalities owe Eskom grows every month.

“This is not one we can do all by ourselves as Eskom, we need society, we need the government to be working together with us to address this particular issue.”

The municipalities themselves need to step up their game and pay what is due, Nyati said.

He added that in some cases municipalities are collecting money from communities for electricity but they are not paying Eskom.

He said it was surprising that there is lawlessness in South Africa but large companies, institutions and metros – which should be leading by example – refuse to pay their debts.

Illegal connections another sore point for Eskom

“Now we are having load reduction driven by illegal connections,” the Eskom chairperson said.

He said this is connected to municipal debt because “they talk to the kind of values our society has”.

“Values of being able to go do things that are not legal, breaking the law. This is something our society needs to work on.”

He said it was good that a number of people in government are listening and working with Eskom, but the utility also needed the buy-in of communities.

At the moment there are cases where Eskom has to invest in replacing transformers every few weeks because they explode due to illegal connections.

Chronic load shedding ‘behind us’

Marokane said South Africa should see a summer without load shedding.

“Our focus remains single-mindedly on implementing the generation recovery plan,” he said.

“It is one way we will move faster towards the elimination of load shedding.”

He noted Eskom’s improved performance over the last year.

The utility saw a R10 billion year-on-year reduction in diesel utilisation costs and an average unplanned capacity loss of 12.4GW compared to the predicted 15.5GW.

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Eskom has reduced the base load consumption in unplanned outages (as shown in the image above).

“If we keep the unplanned losses below 13 000GW we should have a load shedding-free summer,” he added.

“At worst we anticipate that in the unlikely event the escalation of unplanned losses reach up to 15 500GW, we’ll at most experience stage 2.”

Unplanned losses over the past four months have hovered around 12 000 GW.

He said Eskom will bring back generation capacity at Medupi unit 4 and Kusile unit 6, which will increase the utility’s power reserves.

“Load shedding at the chronic level that it was, is behind us,” he said.

Marokane said rain and heat expected in summer are expected to affect power stations and there may be unplanned losses because of this.

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Watch the briefing below: