Eskom spends more than half of

The national energy regulator has been keeping a close watch on the utility’s diesel consumption

The National energy regulator of South Africa (Nersa) has called out Eskom for blowing more than half of its quarterly budget for diesel for the first quarter of the 2024-25 financial year in just one month.

Eskom has averted load-shedding from late March to date — 44 straight days of continuous power — which Electricity Minister Kgosientsho

Ramokgopa partly attributed to last year’s ramped-up maintenance of power stations.

But Nersa says this is largely because the power utility has been burning more diesel — which is only supposed to be used as an emergency because of its costliness — than usual.

Nersa regulates Eskom’s diesel allocation for open-cycle gas turbines (OCGT), managing pricing, distribution and usage. It also sets prices and issues licences to suppliers.

To keep the lights on, Eskom has already hit 168.5 gigawatt hours (GWH) of the 316.5 Gwh of electricity that it is allowed to produce using diesel for the first quarter April to June, Nersa’s head of communications Charles Hlebela told the Mail & Guardian this week.

Diesel is used to power opencycle gas turbines at Ankerlig and Gourikwa power stations, which have a combined energy generation capacity of 2000 megawatts, enough to avert stage two load-shedding.

According to Nersa’s allocation, Eskom can generate 1 266 gigawattshour (Gwh) of electricity using emergency reserves of diesel for the entire financial year ending March 2025. This translates to 405 120 litres of diesel for the year.

Hlebela said it was important that Eskom maintains an energy availability factor of 63.25% to keep loadshedding at bay. The EAF measures the performance of the power utility’s generating plants.

“Having a high energy availability factor will also mean that plant breakdowns are lessened, therefore there is no need to use so much diesel,” Hlebela said, adding that should Eskom not adhere to its allocation, Nersa would review the allowance.

Nersa’s comments are contrary to Ramokgopa, who told a recent media briefing that Eskom had been using less diesel for generation.

“Starting 1 May, we have not been burning the diesel. A considerable part of April we have been burning a significantly lower amount of diesel, and still, we don’t have load-shedding. The last time we were burning this diesel we had load-shedding. The only answer can be found in the fact that these machines are performing better,” the minister said.

Critics, including opposition parties, suggest the utility has caved in to political pressure to keep the lights