by Roger Lilley, Energize

On the weekend of 18 and 19 March 2023, Eskom announced that load shedding could be reduced to Stage 1. This followed an earlier announcement late last week, that the energy availability factor (EAF) of six of Eskom’s power stations had increased to 70%. Someone suggested that those six stations could provide all the power the county needed.

Although this announcement was generally well received, one wonders how the power utility achieved an increase in its EAF. The quickest way to increase EAF is to keep as many units as possible online, but it is a short-term solution.

Shortly after Brian Molefe was appointed Eskom’s Group Chief Executive, the power utility’s overall energy availability factor (EAF) increased and load shedding ended. For much of his tenure, and that of his replacement, Matshela Koko, the country was spared load shedding.

How did they achieve that?

Molefe rearranged the power stations’ maintenance programmes to ensure that more generating units remained online and in service at any one time. This increased the overall EAF and decreased the need for load shedding. But in 2016, Brian Molefe resigned from the power utility under a cloud of suspicion regarding his involvement with the Gupta family and associates who were said to be involved in fraudulent activities regarding the supply of coal to Eskom.

At the time, he and Koko were praised for their achievements. But what they did actually resulted in the country being thrust into even deeper stages of load shedding than ever before. The rescheduling of the maintenance schedule reduced the amount of time the units were offline for maintenance. As a result, many of these units became unreliable and prone to frequent, unexpected breakdowns.

Something else Molefe and Koko did was to overuse the utility’s diesel-powered peaking plants to add to the EAF. Although these have remained reliable, the cost of diesel fuel made electricity generation far more expensive than necessary.

This past weekend, Eskom announced that the AEF had improved to the point that it could reduce load shedding to Stages 1 and 2, instead of Stages 4 and above that we had experienced in the prior week.

Under CEO Andre Ruyter, load shedding had increased in severity (high Stages) and frequency. From 1 January 2023 to the time of writing, the country has been exposed to what the utility’s new chairman called “permanent load shedding” – i.e., load shedding every day. This was necessary, we were told, to allow the utility to take units out of service for thorough maintenance. This would ensure that these units would run reliably between periods of planned maintenance.

However, the government found fault with this methodology, and accused the CEO of undermining the State and preparing Eskom to become reliant on the private sector’s renewable energy resources.

De Ruyter left the utility after being given a cup of coffee to which, reportedly, poison had been added.

Calib Cassim, the power utility’s chief financial officer was appointed interim chief executive as the search for a permanent CE began.

The sudden and dramatic reduction in load shedding was short-lived though. On Monday, the public was told that load shedding would continue to be applied for the rest of the week. This was necessary, according to Eskom, because 15 645 MW of generating capacity was lost through breakdowns and 4942 MW of generating capacity was out of service for planned maintenance. At the same time, the units at the Matla, Tutuka and Medupi power stations which should have been returned to service, were still offline.

According to Eskom's latest load shedding schedule (see below), the severity (Stages) of load shedding has been reduced for the week ahead.

One hopes that the new CE is not repeating the actions of Molefe and Koko who kept the lights on at all costs by keeping units online and under load which should have been undergoing maintenance.

At the same time, the power utility reminds users that electricity tariffs will increase by over 18% on 1 April 2023.