By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
There will be some respite from Stage 6 load shedding over the weekend, state owned power utility Eskom said on Friday afternoon.
Stage 6 load shedding will continue to be implemented until 05h00 on Saturday. Thereafter, Stage 3 load shedding will be implemented from 05h00 until 16h00 and stage 4 load shedding will be implemented from 16h00 until 05h00 on Sunday.
This cycle will be repeated until 05h00 on Monday morning, the group said.
Eskom warned that these load shedding stages may change at short notice.
“Eskom will publish a further update as soon as any significant changes occur,” it said.
Breakdowns are currently at 15,930MW of generating capacity while the generating capacity out of service for planned maintenance is 6,505MW.
Over the past 24 hours two generation units at Kendal and Kriel, and a unit each at Matimba and Medupi Power Stations were returned to service.
In the same period, a generating unit each at Matla and Tutuka Power Stations were taken offline for repairs.
The delays in returning a unit to service at Kriel and two units at Tutuka Power Stations have contributed to the capacity constraints.
Eskom is struggling to produce 26,000MW consistently, usually falling somewhere between 23,000MW and 25,000MW. Demand, meanwhile, is between 30,000MW and 32,000MW.
Meanwhile private energy distributor Rural Maintenance Free State (RFS) says it has no alternative but to switch off a portion of its solar farm during the day from Friday (21 April) onwards after losing a court appeal against Eskom.
The Johanneburg High Court this week dismissed the appeal based on technicalities, effectively barring Rural Maintenance from using its own load shedding schedules for Frankfort in the Free State.
Because of this, the group said it would no longer be allowed to lessen the negative effects of load shedding when the sun is shining and will have to “dump” unused solar energy while parts experience load shedding.
Eskom, however, said this was misleading, and that it had to stop the producer from “voiding” load shedding when it wasn’t allowed to.
Rural Maintenance had been granted permission by Eskom to implement self-load shedding in the region from January 2023. Under this agreement, the private company bought electricity from four solar farms in the region at a lower cost and supplied it to the Mafube Local Municipality.
This was done in line with Nersa regulations and includes a code of practice designed to ensure fair implementation of load shedding and to protect the integrity of the national electricity grid, Eskom said.
Through the use of solar farms, the area would have alternative load shedding schedules compared to the rest of the nation.
Rural Maintenance said that on days of peak performance, it was able to void load shedding altogether. This, however, triggered a response from Eskom, which raised a dispute.
In a statement following the ruling, the embattled power utility said that Rural Maintenance simply could not cover the full load of the municipality through the solar solutions, and without batter backups, households were still reliant on Eskom’s grid power.
Despite this, Eskom said that the power producer introduced its own term of “voiding”, which saw the group move outside of the approved load shedding schedules.
“Eskom repeatedly rejected this proposal and attempted to help RFS understand why this is unacceptable and in violation of (the regulations). It is at this stage that Rural Maintenance opted to institute legal processes against Eskom,” it said.
Eskom said the voiding practice was dangerous to the grid because, in the case of Frankfort, the generation capacity of the solar plant is not sufficient to cover all electricity needs of the town during load shedding.
“Even during daytime hours when the plant is running at optimal operation, a portion of the town’s electricity requirements are still supplied by Eskom. As in the rest of the country, the Eskom-supplied electricity to Frankfort is also subject to load shedding,” it said.
The group said that the generation of the plants is already included as part of the town’s normal load profile, so the generation cannot be offset against load shedding. Therefore, RFS is non-compliant to the agreement.
“The PV plant in Frankfort has no standby capability to offset total demand, thus the plant’s output forms part of the system base load, and Frankfort remains subjected to load shedding.”
In court, Eskom argued that circumstances like Frankfort’s on a larger scale could prevent the company from fulfilling its duty to manage the grid and could have catastrophic consequences for the country.