South Africa aims to unlock 13GW in grid expansion plan

South Africa will prioritise the expansion of its grid over the next decade as it aims finally to put an end to daily power cuts, said electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa.

Government is working on about 25 projects in existing substations that could potentially unlock about 13GW of energy, he told reporters on Sunday. “In the next 10 years, we think that it’s possible for us to be able to have an additional 24GW,” he said.

With solutions far in the future, though, the country’s power problems roll on. State-owned utility Eskom announced stage-4 load shedding from 2pm on Sunday until 5am on Monday.

Plant breakdowns have increased to 16.9GW of generating capacity, it said in a statement. “The grid remains vulnerable and susceptible to plummeting availability of megawatts,” Ramokgopa said.

The minister said there is a need for Eskom to ensure it improves the reliability of generation units on a continuous basis. “I think it’s particularly unhelpful when Eskom must go out from time to time with the announcement of the intensity of load shedding.

“I think there was one day where we shifted the intensity of load shedding 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 because they would have expected lower stages of load shedding,” Ramokgopa said.

UCLF

The minister said that as extra megawatts are added to the grid, some of these 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 later we must make amendments to that announcement, which undermines the statements Eskom releases from time to time.”

Another area of focus is on the “unplanned capability loss factor” (UCLF) on units that keep tripping. 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,” Ramokgopa said.

Read: Legal battle over Eskom’s grid connection rules

He noted that Eskom had planned to keep the UCLF at less than 15GW this winter. “But you can see that as part of our optimistic scenario, when we did the winter outlook, that we’re not keeping to that.”  — Bella Genga, © 2023 Bloomberg LP, with additional reporting by SANews

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