Here is the latest on the Eskom summer outlook and loadshedding. South Africa should have a summer without loadshedding this year. However, if outages were enforced, the worst-case scenario would see Stage 2 implemented, Eskom said today (26 August). 

Updating the media on its State of the System – Summer 2024/2025 Outlook, the power utility’s Group Chief Executive Dan Marokane confirmed that South Africa should experience a “loadshedding-free summer.”

This is premised on the basis that unplanned losses are kept below 13GW.

“If we keep the unplanned losses below 13 gigawatts, we should be having a loadshedding free summer. At worst, we anticipate that in a likely event, that the escalation of unplanned losses reaches up to 15.5GW, we will, at most, experience Stage Two,” said Marokane.

The utility would be in a position early next year to definitively say that “chronic loadshedding is behind us for now.”

Eskom summer outlook: Loadshedding forecast improved since last year

Amid the loadshedding good news, Marokane said Eskom had changed two things with regard to the summer outlook.

“The first one is that on the back of the structural shift in the performance, we have reduced the base load.

“The base assumption in as far as the unplanned outages are concerned, going into summer, we have now premising a base case on a scenario of 13,000MW of unplanned losses.

This contrasts the 14,500MW to 17,000MW in the projection ahead of summer 2024.

“The key message here is that the performance over the last four months have consistently hovered around unplanned losses at 12,000MW,” said Marokane.

Additional power generation capacity to be added to the grid

He said the focus for power station managers and teams is on controlling unplanned losses.

“… and we should be staying below 13,000MW… we should be able to have a comfortable summer, of course.”

In the coming months, additional generation capacity will be brought online from Medupi Unit 4 and from Kusile’s Unit 6.

“…[and] the second unit from Kusile that is going through its long-term operation programme. 2,500MW will add significant margin to our reserves, and once we have that, together with the sustained performance that we are seeing, we should get into a conversation sooner, in the new year, by March, as to when we can essentially indicate that from our perspective, loadshedding at the chronic level that it was, is behind us for now.”

Marokane said the positive performance trend emanating from a generation performance “really gives us the headroom to focus on the execution of our strategy.”

“This business has a role to play going forward without the noise of loadshedding… we are able to then implement the various strategies that are key to ensuring that we play a role, and we do so in a manner that is comfortable within the changing electricity supply landscape as promulgated now within the ERA Bill.

Municipal debt a ‘huge problem’

Eskom chairman Mteto Nyati said one of the big issues that the utility identified was a dysfunctional organisational culture from a financial perspective “in terms of the key systemic issues that we have identified.”

“The first one was the high level of debt, you know, the debt burden that this business was facing. We also had an issue of having tariffs that are not cost reflective and, and last but not least, around financial but the issue of non payment and, because of loadshedding, we also have declining sales.”

Nyati  said municipal debt is “a huge problem.”

“…each and every month, this amount continues to grow and grow. This has to come to an end. We need to figure out and find solutions around this. And this is not one of those that we can do all by ourselves as Eskom, we need society.

“We need the government to be working together with us to address this particular issue.

“We need the municipalities themselves. It’s really surprising us to see that in some cases, money collected from the communities… are not being paid into Eskom.”

FAQs about grid capacity in South Africa

Is the grid capacity the same as the generational capacity?

Generation capacity is how much electricity the power stations can generate. Grid capacity is how much power the system can reliably deliver.

What are Eskom’s interim grid capacity allocation rules?

The grid capacity allocation rules are designed to reflect the principles of non-discriminatory and open access to the grid in South Africa.

Where do load curtailment and loadshedding interplay with the grid?

Load curtailment is a practice that Eskom uses wherein large power users are directly asked to reduce their power usage. Loadshedding is the rotational outage of electricity supply.

Who is in charge of the grid in South Africa?

Once the Electricity Regulation Amendment Bill is enacted, the National Transmission Company of South Africa (NTCSA) will own and operate the country’s national transmission system, the System Operator, the grid strengthening function, energy market services and the International Trader. Currently, distribution grids mostly fall under either Eskom or local municipalities. ESI