By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
State owned power utility Eskom has announced that load-shedding will remain suspended until 16:00 on Friday, 29 December 2023.
Eskom said that this is possible thanks to improved generation performance, lower demand for the holiday period as well as sufficient emergency reserves.
If nothing unexpected happens to reintroduce load shedding over the next few days, this will be the longest streak of no load shedding since October, and the first time the country has seen multiple weeks of no outages since August 2022.
The utility said it would announce any changes if and when they happen.
It must be noted that the improvements in load shedding in recent weeks do not put the country in the clear, as the return to normal business and factory operations await in the new year.
However, while breakdowns and demand are low, Eskom has moved to significantly ramp up its maintenance, which should put power stations on better footing when the demand inevitably starts increasing in 2024.
On Thursday, Minister in the presidency responsible for electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said Eskom has been able to suspend load shedding due to the maintenance on Eskom’s generating units.
Ramokgopa said Eskom was taking advantage of the lower demand in the festive season to ramp up maintenance of its generating units.
“It is important that during this period of low demand, we are able to take this opportunity to ensure we accelerate maintenance. What has been our experience is that when the units have gone out on planned maintenance [and] when they return on average, they continue to perform and remain on load,” he said.
The electricity minister said Eskom’s maintenance programme over the last few weeks has led to South Africa’s electricity system being “healthy”.
“We are going to benefit exceptionally well as a country for us to continue on this path of planned maintenance.”
Municipal debt to Eskom, however, remains a concern.
Eskom’s interim results for the period ending 30 September 2023 revealed that municipal debt has increased to R70 billion, from R58.5 billion in March.
Meanwhile criminal cartels operate at Eskom with impunity, stealing billions of rands a month and have brought the utility to its knees.
This is feedback from former Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter, who told the Business Day Spotlight podcast that if he had not spoken publicly about the rampant corruption at Eskom, very little would have been done to stop it.
“It appears that it is, if not explicitly condoned, then at least tolerated, and we simply have to get to grips with the existence of this shadow economy,” he said.
“It seems to me that there are senior people, whether that be in politics or the cartels or both, that are out there and continue to benefit from what is going on.”
He said that he does have some ideas as to who the senior people behind the criminal cartels are but would not elaborate further.
De Ruyter previously estimated that criminal cartels were stealing over R1 billion a month from Eskom, but this figure may be even larger now.