Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, the Minister in the Presidency for Electricity visiting Kusile and Kendal power stations to thank the committed, competent and patriotic men and women of Eskom for their contribution to the significant progress to generation performance. Photo: Supplied (GCIS)
Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has commended Eskom for achieving an Energy Availability Factor (EAF) above 70%, a feat last achieved nearly three years ago, as the Unplanned Capability Loss Factor (UCLF) is now less than 10 000MW.
In his Energy Action Plan media briefing yesterday, Ramokgopa said consistently good performance from Kusile, Lethabo, Majuba, Matla and Medupi from the latter part of 2023 had contributed to the EAF trend, but the improvement was also being seen in older power stations with improved performance from Arnot, Camden, Hendrina as well as Grootvlei.
He said the improvement in Eskom’s power generation was reflected in the EAF rising to 62.08% in week 18 of 2024, from only 49.99% in week 15 of 2023, and had now reached 70.78%.
“As I stand before you today, the Energy Availability Factor of Eskom has breached the 70% mark. That’s significant. The last time we achieved this was in August 2021,” Ramokgopa said.
“The month-to-date statistics suggest that we are at 64.34% and the year to date we are at 59.92%. But we have breached the psychological mark of 70% as a result of this consistent performance.
“This reduction in the UCLF is due to a year’s hard work on planned maintenance which has resulted in improving the reliability of Eskom’s power plants. This improvement is reflected in the EAF breaching the 70% level and is currently at 70.78%, with Kusile at 93%.”
Eskom senior manager in the group executive generation office, Eric Shunmagum, said the target was still to get to a consistent 65% EAF this financial year that ends in March 2025, and to reach 70% in the 2025/6 financial year.
He added that there had been no specific damage to Eskom infrastructure from this weekend’s solar flare activity. In 2003 several power transformers had been damaged by that year’s solar flare activity.
Meanwhile, Ramokgopa was at pains to stress that the current sequence of 47 days without load shedding had nothing to do with electioneering, ahead of the 29 May national elections.
This comes as load shedding has been suspended for 47 consecutive days during which diesel-powered Open Cycle Gas Turbines (OCGTs) usage has been lower than the same time last year.
The suspension of load shedding was driven by an improvement in coal fleet performance supported by solar during the day as May had seen clear skies and expensive diesel was not being used to keep the lights on.
The OCGT load factor for April 2024 dropped to 6.8% compared with the April 2023 figure of 19.13%.
“There are some commentators that say Eskom is using expensive diesel-fuelled OCGTs to make sure there is no load shedding ahead of the elections, but they could not be further from the truth as some days in May we have not had to use OCGTs at all,” Ramokgopa said.
He said there was no OCGTs usage on 5, 10 and 11 May.
In April, the OCGTs only provided 86MW compared with 344MW the same month last year, while OCGTs only provided 8MW this month compared with 488MW for the whole of May 2023.
Ramokgopa said that unplanned outages were reduced by 4 400MW since April 26, 2024, due to extensive maintenance.
He said this patient investment in planned maintenance has meant that Eskom now has a 4 000MW margin between its winter base case assumption of 14 000MW unplanned outages, and the current unplanned outages of less than 10 000MW.
Ramakgopa noted that in terms of planned maintenance from December 2023 to March 2024, Eskom averaged 16.25% over 4 months, which was the highest over the last three years and enabled Eskom to adhere to the recovery plan, and allow for opportunistic maintenance to address prevailing short-term risks to availability.
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