By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
State owned power utility Eskom will be running load shedding at lower stages this weekend, continue its morning suspensions, but now ramping up to stage 1 during the day.
On Friday, load shedding stage 3 will commence at 16:00 and then be suspended at 00:00.
Load shedding will then return at stage 1 at 05:00 Saturday until 16:00, where stage 4 will commence until midnight.
Eskom said that breakdowns are currently 16,546 MW of generating capacity.
Generating capacity out for planned maintenance is currently at 2,497 MW.
In the last 24 hours, a generating unit each at Kendal and Lethabo and two units at Camden were returned to service.
Over the same period, a generation unit each at Arnot and Malta power stations were taken out of service due to breakdowns.
In addition, there were further delays in returning to service a generating unit at Arnot, Grootvlei and Hendrina power stations, which is a contribution to capacity constraints.
Load shedding has been running at much lower stages this past week, with blackouts suspended between midnight at 16:00.
Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramakgopha says there has been significant improvement on Eskom’s generation capacity, with lower stages of load shedding on the cards over the weekend.
Ramokgopa virtually briefed the media regarding the implementation of the Energy Action Plan following his visit to the Redstone Concentrated Solar Power Plant in Postmasburg, Northern Cape on Friday.
The minister described the progress being made in addressing the country’s energy crisis as “marginal and significant”.
Ramokgopa said load shedding stages have been reduced in the past few days following an improvement in the energy availability factor (EAF), which currently stood at 60%.
“The last time we reached an energy availability factor of 60% on a specific day was the 2nd of September 2022. When we started in May, the improvement in relation to the EAF was about 7 percentage points.
“On average, a 1 percentage point increase represents 477 megawatts [MW]. If you have a 7 percentage points increase, you are breaching the 3 000MW of additional generation, so essentially we are talking about three stages of load shedding,” he said.
Ramokgopa revealed that the peak demand for electricity had reduced in recent times as the winter period approaches when energy demand is expected to increase.
A major contributor we are seeing is that the demand has not peaked to the levels that we had envisaged [but] of course there is still more days ahead of winter and it’s likely going to reach levels that we have projected. For now, we are benefitting from the fact that we are experiencing a lesser peak in demand, averaging 29 000MW,” he said.
The minister said the aim was to sustain the downward trend in demand with the intervention measures put in place.
Such interventions include two additional hybrid projects from the risk mitigation independent power procurement programme.
“We want to sustain this performance and key to this performance are the Eskom units so that they become reliable,” the minister added.
Ramokgopa highlighted that there were teams trying to help optimise the Open Cycle Gas Turbines (OCGTs).