September’s load shedding was worse than the entire 2020

September 2022 recorded more load shedding than the whole of 2020, the CSIR said on Monday.

“September 2022 was an exceptionally high month in terms of load shedding. The year 2022 is the first year that the majority of load shedding has not been stage 2; it was overtaken by stage 4.”

The CSIR’s annual statistics on power generation in South Africa for the first half of 2022 showed that the Eskom fleet energy availability factor (EAF) continued to decrease, with an average EAF of 59.4%, compared to 61.7% for 2021 and 65% for 2020.

“This year overtook 2021 as the most load shedding-intensive year yet, concentrated in July and September,” the CSIR said.

“September 2022, the highest load shedding month ever, on its own, had more load shedding than the entire of 2020. This year’s stage-6 load shedding has far surpassed 2019’s, the only other year that had stage 6.”

Eskom announced it was moving from stage-4 to stage-6 load shedding in June this year. Stage 6 had only been implemented once before, in December 2019.

The report, which zoomed into power cuts between 1 January and 30 June 2022, also looked into load shedding and EAF data up until 30 September 2022.

“In the first half of 2022, the total system demand was similar to the year before, but still 3TWh (2.5%) below the pre-lockdown levels of 2019,” the data showed.

Get TechCentral’s daily newsletter