Ramokgopa claims energy picture still improving

Eskom has recorded an improvement in its energy generation, moving from an average of 28GW to nearly 29GW in the past week, electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said.

“There’s a considerable improvement on the generation side, you can see that we’re beginning to normalise available capacity to be upward of 29GW,” he said.

According to Ramokgopa, from 7-11 August Eskom had a generation capacity of 28.9GW and exceeded 29GW on two occasions.

Ramokgopa was updating the media on the progress made regarding the one-year implementation of the energy action plan (EAP) and provided a weekly generation outlook.

“The expectation now is that we’re entering a less severe period of cold and demand is going to tamper down,” the minister said.

As the team improves generation capacity, they are also working to ensure the long-term sustainability of the units to become more reliable by ramping up planned outages. “For long-term sustainability, it’s important to take out these units as and when we deem it necessary, because when these units come back [online] they sustain levels of performance.”

On unplanned capacity loss factor (UCLF), the minister said this was also decreasing. UCLF is 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.

Ramokgopa: UCLF at 15GW

According to the minister, UCLF is still at an average of 15GW, from 18GW in previous weeks, with plans to get it under 14GW.

Ramokgopa acknowledged that load shedding is devastating to the economy. However, Eskom is working around the clock to turn this around by improving underperforming power stations and addressing breakdown issues, he said.

Read: Eskom is crippling SA’s 300-year-old wine industry

“I’m very optimistic about the future. We set the bar very high. We’re going to improve this energy availability factor.”

Eskom on Monday, meanwhile, said it expects to implement load shedding at stage 1 during the day and stage 3 at night for the foreseeable future.

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