By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The Minister of Electricity and Energy Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa hailed Eskom for reaching a milestone of 272 days of no load shedding across the country.
Ramokgopa hosted the last Energy Action Plan media briefing for the year to provide a reflection on the key achievements and challenges over the past year.
The minster cautioned that the country had not yet put the rolling blackouts permanently behind it.
“We are within touching distance of the resolution of load-shedding but we are not necessarily out of the woods,” he said.
“Even though we’re seeing the kind of phenomenal performance that we’re seeing, it is important that we continue to fix our eyes on the bouncing ball, and that bouncing ball is to ensure that we end load-shedding, and then in the long term, to ensure that we are able to provide the sufficient head space for the South African economy to grow.”
“We want to make it just an abnormal conversation for us to even have a discussion about 272 days of no load shedding … It’s an expectation that there shouldn’t be load-shedding in a most industrialised economy such as ours.”
He said the country would bring on stream different types of technologies “to ensure that we are able to achieve … our decarbonisation ambitions”, noting that 80% of South Africa’s generation capacity still comes from fossil fuels.
“We’ve got a responsibility that we are able to address issues of air quality, which has got significant health implications for those people who are living within the immediate proximity … of these power stations,” he said.
“We also have a responsibility to ensure that we reduce the CO₂ (carbon dioxide) emissions as part of that global agenda of addressing the scourge of climate change.”
Ramokgopa said another key milestone for Eskom was that the utility had been able to reduce its unplanned capacity loss factor (UCLF) — essentially, the degree to which its units fail on their own and cannot perform efficiently.
“The intention there is to bring down that number. Once you bring down that number of the UCLF it means then we have more megawatts on the grid… This time last year, we were sitting at about 33.1% UCLF, now we’re sitting at 24.9 UCLF. What that means is that we’ve got generating capacity on the grid, and it’s as a result of the sterling work that the team has been able to achieve.”
He said the energy availability factor (EAF) — the efficiency of the performance of the grid in its totality — had averaged 62.55% from 1 April to 19 December, an improvement from about 55.24% last year.
“As a result of this performance, we have been able to save about R16.06 billion just from stopping us from burning diesel, “Ramokgopa said.
“This is significant, because once we are able to reduce the cost associated with diesel, it means that Eskom is becoming a more efficient generator of electricity … If we are able to sustain this over a period of time … we’re able to pass all this benefit to the end consumer.”
“Our ambition for the EAF for the financial year 2025 (is that) we want to achieve 70%, “he said, stating that this would be achieved through new generation capacity and the recovery of some units at Eskom’s power stations that have been out.
“70% EAF is not an arbitrary number. It’s a number that is derived from … engineering science … We know that we have the skills to get it to that level, and that’s the level of confidence that we have.
Meanwhile Eskom has launched a forensic investigation into an electricity theft racket involving the use of illicit tokens for prepaid meters that may have cost the company billions of rand in lost revenue.
Eskom is also probing the security of its IT systems, along with the involvement of some of its employees.
Eskom board chairman Mteto Nyati said the probe is one of the reasons why its annual results for the 2024 financial year were published late.
Collusion is suspected between Eskom staff and illicit operators who breached controls within the prepaid ecosystem to facilitate the creation and sale of fraudulent prepaid electricity tokens,” said Nyati.
Eskom estimates that it lost 13.9TWh of electricity due to theft in 2024, adding up to around R23-billion in revenue losses. Some of this is attributed to illegal connections and meter tampering, but according to CEO Dan Marokane, the fraudulent token scheme is far more sophisticated in its execution as it involves the hacking of Eskom’s internal IT systems and appears to involve some of its own employees.
Eskom said it is unable to estimate its exposure resulting from the illicit tokens because it has no idea how many tokens compatible with its meters are currently in circulation or the value in electricity each token represents.