Electricity Minister raises hopes of fewer hours of load shedding – but we’re not yet out of the dark

“As we begin to see additional improvements, you’re likely going to see that during part of the day we might not have load shedding. But of course, it’s a function of the extent of the demand and the rate at which we do the planned maintenance,” said Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa on Sunday 27 August, during his weekly media briefing on the implementation of the Energy Action Plan.

Eskom will begin to ramp up planned maintenance, after the power utility had decreased maintenance over the winter season, said Ramokgopa. 

“As part of the winter outlook, we did indicate that we are going to slow down planned outages, and once we get out of a very difficult winter we are going to ramp it up, because we need to protect the generating units to ensure their sustainability and reliability in the future,” he said.  

Peak demand has dipped as we move out of the doldrums of winter to spring. “This gives us an opportunity to ramp up planned maintenance, because demand goes down, we need to improve the health of these,” said Ramokgopa.

He said Eskom’s unplanned capability loss factor – or unplanned losses – has dropped from 17,000MW, but still remains above 15,000MW. Ramokgopa described this as Eskom’s “Achilles heel” and said it was something that is receiving attention.

This week, the grid required power cuts at stages 1 and 3. Load shedding has been less intense than it has been in a very long time. On Sunday, 27 August, Eskom announced that load shedding would be suspended between 2am and 4pm, “owing to lower weekend demand and adequate emergency generation reserves.”

#LoadsheddingUpdate
Sunday, 27 August 2023: Loadshedding was suspended at 02:10 this morning until 16:00 today, owing to lower weekend demand and adequate emergency generation reserves. Eskom will publish another update this afternoon.

— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) August 27, 2023

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