South Africans have been quietly pondering the fate of loadshedding, questioning how the country swiftly transitioned from a critical need for power outages to a sudden absence of loadshedding within a few weeks.
Also read: City of Cape Town overwhelmed with applications for solar installations
Cape {town} Etc discount: Looking for things to do in the city, at half the price? Get exclusive offers here.
According to Eskom, the winter season is proving to be less cold than anticipated, resulting in South Africans experiencing a greater supply of electricity compared to most of the year.
As per Time Lives, Calib Cassim, the acting CEO of Eskom, informed the parliamentary standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) that the power utility has reduced its maintenance activities during winter. He added when Eskom predicted loadshedding for the season, they had anticipated much colder weather.
Cassim said the energy availability factor (EAF) is the outcome of how unplanned outages are controlled. These unplanned outages play an important role in ensuring stable power generation. Over the past 12 to 18 months, these outages have consistently hovered around 17 000MW to 18 000MW.
Eskom has been striving to limit unplanned outages to 15 000MW or less. There has been a notable increase in this trend, with unplanned outages ranging between 15 000MW and 16 000MW, which has significantly contributed to the improvement of the situation, as stated by Cassim.
‘That gives us about 2,000MW to 3,000MW more and that is why the EAF is up.’
‘If you look at the peak of what we are currently experiencing, we just need to keep the momentum going as there is no load-shedding in the morning and stage 3 (later). Had we not reduced the unplanned outages by 2,000MW to 3,000MW, you would be sitting at stage 6 in the peak,’ said Cassim.
Cassim further explained that Eskom’s current objective is to maintain unplanned outages at a range of 15 000MW to 15 500MW or lower. While he acknowledged that the real challenge would arise during the summer season when increased maintenance work is necessary, he stated that Eskom has already started some short-term maintenance, with a significant portion of 6 000MW already completed.
He added, ‘We had an opportunity to even drop stages lower, but rather than dropping to stage 2 and then going up to stage 4 and 5 in the week, (we decided) to keep the consistency and predictability for the system and citizens of the country. So that is the big focus from a generation perspective.’
Explore Cape Town and its surroundings with these incredible deals on cars for under 100k. Find car listings here.
Also read:
Eskom plans to remotely control power supply to all homes during peak
Picture: Siphiwe Sibeko / Gallo images
