There is a need for Eskom to improve the reliability of generation units as work continues to end loadshedding, according to Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa.
“I think it’s particularly unhelpful when Eskom has to go out from time to time with the announcement of the intensity of loadshedding,” said Ramokgopa during a briefing in Pretoria on Sunday.
“I think there was one day where we shifted the intensity of loadshedding about three times in a space of about six hours.
“I think that undermines the credibility of our efforts, but also the ability of industries and households to be able to plan.”
He said as extra megawatts are added to the grid, some of the problematic units will be taken out for service to ensure they are more reliable.
“This will give us an opportunity that when we make a promise of a stage ‘X’, you won’t find that much later we have to make amendments to that announcement, which undermine the statements Eskom releases from time to time.”
He said the additional area of focus remains work on unplanned capability loss factor (UCLF) on units that keep tripping.
The UCLF is defined as the ratio between the unavailable energy of the units that are out on unplanned outages over a period compared to the total net installed capacity of all units over the same period.
“It’s an area that requires our attention,” he said.
He noted that Eskom had planned to keep the UCLF at less than 15 000 megawatts (MW).
“But you can see that as part of our optimistic scenario when we did the winter outlook that we’re not keeping to that.
“We do admit that it’s an area that requires attention because of course it takes on the available capacity and therefore the correction that you introduced as a result of the elevated UCLF, which increases the intensity of loadshedding.”
Ramokgopa added that additional interventions are needed to ensure the state-owned entity can turn that around.
“The levels of loadshedding are not going down to where we want them to be. Even with this elevated, the peak demand in my view, when I was sharing with the team, is that we should not be in way upwards of stage three.
“I do promise that we’re going to address this with the urgency that the state is required.”
With other challenges that Eskom faces, Ramokgopa said they have been seeing improvement since May on the generation side, adding 1 600MW into the grid.
“And of course, on the human side, the expectation has always been that when you enter the latter part of June and into July, we’re going to see the demand that is spiking.
“That is our own projections, you can see that the demand in July has been greater than any other period during this winter.”
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