By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
State owned power utility Eskom says that it will again suspend load shedding during the day this week, keeping evening outages at stage 3.
Stage 4 load shedding will be implemented from 16h00 until midnight on Sunday (11 June), thereafter, it will be suspended.
The suspension will run from midnight to 16h00 on Monday, after which stage 3 load shedding will be put in place. This is expected to repeat on Tuesday and Wednesday as well.
This pattern will repeat until further notice, it said.
The suspension of load shedding is coming despite breakdowns exceeding Eskom’s baseline plan for 15,000MW
Breakdowns are currently at 16,115MW of generating capacity while the generating capacity out of service for planned maintenance is 3,766MW.
Over the past 24 hours, a generating unit each at Arnot and Kendal power stations were returned to service.
In the same period, a generation unit each at Kriel and Hendrina power stations were taken out of service due to breakdowns.
The further delays in returning to service a generating unit at Grootvlei, Hendrina, Majuba and Tutuka power stations are contributing to the current capacity constraints.
Eskom said its teams are working around the clock to return these generating units to service over the next few days.
Meanwhile the chairman of beleaguered state power utility, Mpho Makwana said a change in its management structure has helped improve its plant performance, enabling blackouts to be eased, and further gains can be expected.
Over the past few weeks, the proportion of power Eskom could produce relative to its generating capacity has risen to 60.5%, compared with about 56% a year ago, Makwana said in an interview in Bloomberg’s Johannesburg bureau on Friday.
The improvement belied warnings that South Africa’s winter weather could see blackouts exceed previous records of as long as 12 hours a day earlier this year. The power cuts, which began in 2008, have hobbled South Africa’s economy and weakened the rand. The central bank estimates that the outages will shave 2 percentage points off the nation’s growth rate this year.
“The amelioration has not been a fluke,” Makwana said. He attributed part of the gains to the company’s decisions to scrap the post of chief operating officer and give individual plant managers more direct access to senior executives — changes he said had improved morale.
“We are making headway,” Makwana said. “It’s still early days to have song and dance, but for a full month now we’ve seen this consistent performance.”
The chairman expects Eskom to turn a corner by 2025 and that the energy availability factor could potentially rise to 70% by then. The board is also working on a longer-term strategy for the company, dubbed the Eskom 2035 benchmark process.