Eskom hoping to limit winter load shedding to stage 2
Eskom said on Friday that it planned to keep load shedding to stage 2 during the upcoming winter period.
The utility gave an update on its strategy to keep the lights on during the winter, during which consumption is normally higher as people try to keep warm.
Friday marked 30 days without any planned power cuts.
Eskom said its energy availability factor has improved by 10% in the last 12 months, from 51% to 61%.
The utility's CEO, Dan Marokane, said this was due to improved maintenance, which, in turn, improved the reliability of its generation fleet.
According to Eskom's projections, stage 2 will be implemented in the likely scenario of 15,500MW of breakdowns, while a worst-case loss of 17,000MW would see stage 5 come into effect/
“We are not out of the woods yet, but it is a trend that is encouraging given the investment that has gone into the generation recovery plan. For winter 2024. the likely scenario from our assumptions is that load shedding will be remain at stage 2 at most.
"In the extreme case where the unreliability increases, that component may go to stage 5, but we really think that on the basis of what we are seeing in the performance of the fleet, load shedding will stay on stage 2 from our planning perspective,
"This is on the back of a decrease of the baseline unreliability capacity reduction of a 1000MW, which is what we use for our baseline assumptions.
"Over the winter period, work continues, and we aim to reduce the unplanned losses by a further 1.7 GW. This will be made up with 1.3 GW from partial load loss reduction," he added.
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