By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
President Cyril Ramaphosa says given the unpredictable performance of Eskom’s fleet of coal-fired power stations, the country will not be able to eliminate load shedding in the short term.
The president weekly newsletter focuses exclusively on the country’s power crisis and the attempts being made to address it.
Over the last two weeks, South Africans have been experiencing the most severe bout of power cuts due to breakdowns at the country’s power stations.
Ramaphosa said there was no quick fix however, progress has been made in the implementation of the additional actions announced in July, even though the effects may not be immediately felt.
The president said that the immediate-term goal was to reduce the frequency and severity of the power cuts by addressing power station breakdowns.
He said that Eskom was urgently implementing measures to improve plant performance, which was a priority until new generation power projects were brought online.
Last week, government signed power purchase agreements for 420 MW with the first three preferred bidders under Bid Window 5 of the renewable energy programme. The three projects are expected to connect to the grid in October 2024, and preparations are underway to sign with the remaining 22 preferred bidders.
The amount of generation capacity to be procured from Bid Window 6 will increase 2 600 MW to 4 200 MW.
Ramaphosa added that the National Electricity Crisis Committee he appointed in July is attending to the legislative and policy reforms that will establish a more efficient, competitive electricity sector.
“Government has published for public comment the amendment that removes the licensing threshold for private generation projects. This will pave the way for investment in larger, utility-scale projects that will rapidly add new generation capacity to the grid.
“The need for environmental authorisations has been waived for transmission infrastructure in strategic corridors where risk to the environment is low.
“The timeframes for energy projects receiving land use authorisations and grid connection approvals has been substantially reduced, as has the National Energy Regulator’s registration process for generation facilities.”
He has urged South Africans to use electricity sparingly.
“While we work to increase the supply of electricity, we must increase efforts to reduce demand, particularly at peak times. We must come together as citizens to alleviate the pressure on the national grid.”
According to the Bureau for Economic Research (BER), the country’s energy crisis continues unabated with Eskom continuing to reach new lows.
Eskom announced on Sunday (25 September) that load shedding will continue this week at stage 3 during the day (00h00 to 16h00) – escalating to stage 4 during the evening (16h00 to 00h00).
BER says this is coming on the tail end of the worst week of load shedding in Eskom’s history.
“The week before last was already the worst on record for the Energy Availability Factor (EAF). This is likely to have worsened further last week,” the BER said.
EAF for the week ending 16 September saw availability as low as 53.16%. Last week started with stage 6 load shedding, which was only lowered to stage 4 by the weekend, the BER said.
Energy availability for 2022 is estimated to be 51%.
Load shedding tracking app, EskomSePush, revealed that South Africa has experienced 1637 hours of national load-shedding over 68 days so far in 2022.
It was significantly higher than the 1,153 hours over 48 days in 2021 and the 844 hours over 35 days in 2020.
The last year has also seen higher load-shedding stages for longer, which is particularly damaging to businesses.
Over the last five years, there has been a clear trend of increasing load shedding caused by breakdowns at power plants.
Updates from Eskom show how bad the situation has become. Of about 50,000MW of installed capacity on Sunday, only 26,360MW was available (53%). Meanwhile, demand was closer to 27,000MW.
The BER noted that the near-constant load shedding is likely to wreak havoc on the economy and could push the country into a technical recession.