By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has denied that the recent dramatic reduction in loadshedding, was a “political ploy ahead of the elections” amid allegations that the reprieve is being stage-managed to improve the governing party’s prospects.
In his weekly letter published on Monday morning, Ramaphosa adds however that it is too early to state that load shedding has been brought to an end.
South Africa has enjoyed 43 days without load shedding, a rare occurrence after more than two years of almost daily blackouts.
The country’s power crisis is one of the main reasons why the ruling ANC’s support has dwindled in the past five years.
Mimmy Gondwe, DA MP and the party’s shadow minister of public enterprises, said in a statement on Friday that the DA will submit a complaint with the Public Protector after a media report that the ruling party is putting pressure on Eskom to keep the lights on less than three weeks before the national election.
He attributed the recent improvement to the progress being made under the Energy Action Plan’s (EAP’s) objectives of “fixing Eskom, unlocking private investment in energy generation, accelerating the procurement of new capacity and supporting rooftop solar”.
Ramaphosa, thus, dismissed speculation that there was less loadshedding because Eskom was using the diesel-fuelled open-cycle gas turbines (OCGTs) “to keep the lights on in the run-up to the elections”.
There have been persistent suggestions in recent weeks that Eskom has managed to provide supply stability for the past 46 days only because it is ignoring its diesel budgets and operating what are meant to be peaking plants almost continuously.
Eskom has strenuously denied these allegations, issuing a statement on May 10 stating that during April 2024, when no loadshedding was declared, R1.1-billion had been spent on its OCGTs and those operated by independent power producers to produce 167.8 GWh. “This is about 60% less than April 2023 when R3.1-billion was spent to produce 470.22 GWh.”
The State-owned utility did, however, exceed its R30-billion OCGT budget for 2023/24 by R3-billion, and also spent a material R3.3-billion in March, against R2.1-billion in the same month of 2023.
Nevertheless, Eskom reported that OCGT usage was falling and announced a diesel budget for the current financial year, which began on April 1, of R5.8-billion. However, R1.16-billion, or 19.7%, had already been spent by May 9.
The utility also insisted that the current period of loadshedding respite was the result of it having reduced unplanned outages by 4 400 MW and an improvement in the energy availability factor (EAF) to above 60%, following a sustained period during which the EAF had been on a steep decline.