Eskom wishes to reduce load-shedding by the weekend

Eskom intends to decrease load-shedding to stage 4 on Friday, 3 February 2023, with the goal of reducing it to stage 3 by Saturday.

According to Thomas Conradie, Eskom’s head of generation, the return of numerous producing units to service and low weekend demand should allow the power provider to lessen load-shedding.

Conradie stated during an Eskom media conference on Thursday, 2 February, that the power provider had returned numerous units to operation in the previous day and that many more will be brought to the grid in the coming days.

This includes a unit at each of the Lethabo and Majuba power plants, which should be operational again on Friday, 3 February, assuming all goes as planned.

“We have had a number of units returning over the last day, today, and tomorrow. [We are] anticipating to reduce load-shedding as we approach the weekend,” Conradie said.

On Tuesday, 31 January 2023, Eskom was obliged to execute stage 6 load shedding overnight. Since then, South Africa has been experiencing continual stage 5 power outages.

South Africa had been undergoing continuous stage 4 load-shedding since Sunday, 29 January, prior to the announcement.

Mteto Nyati, an Eskom board member, spoke about the power utility’s long-term power plant outages and the need to guarantee that it does not run out of diesel funding.

He noted that Koeberg unit 1 — which adds 920MW of power to the grid — is offline for planned repair, which he claimed is developing “in line with the plan”.

According to Nyati, three units of the Kusile power station remain down owing to forced outages, and Eskom expects the units to be back up in about a year.

Because the three units each contribute 800MW to the national power system, the outages have resulted in the loss of 2.4GW of generation capacity.

Nyati stated that Eskom must manage its money in order to purchase fuel to power its open-cycle gas turbines (OCGT).

“We cannot afford to be running out of funds for diesel during this period,” he said.

According to Nyati, running the OCGTs is critical for Eskom in reducing the impact of load-shedding.

Eskom’s fuel issues go beyond merely diesel for its OCGTs. Eskom lost authorization to import nuclear fuel from the United States for its sole nuclear power station, Koeberg, on January 25, 2023.

The US-South Africa Agreement for Cooperation in the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy expired on December 4, resulting in Westinghouse Electric Co. losing its licence from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to export fuel-assembly components to the power plant.

“Eskom is exploring the implications of the withdrawal of the US NRC approval for Westinghouse, and what is needed to enable them to continue supplying fuel,” the power utility said at the time.