40 days of light – but for how long?
The increase in solar panels and photovoltaic and battery storage has contributed to the decrease in blackouts, but winter is on the way
South Africa has marked 40 days without loadshedding, with no imminent power cuts on the horizon, but despite this trend, rolling blackouts are unlikely to vanish by the end of the year.
Despite this temporary return to normalcy, energy expert Chris Yelland said that the dark days of load-shedding are far from over, a comment similar to that of Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, who has reiterated that South Africa is not out of the woods yet.
And Eskom’s group chief executive, Dan Marokane, said in April that South Africans can expect stage two load-shedding in the winter months when demand increases.
According to Business for South Africa (B4SA) — the business and government partnership set up to deal with energy, freight, crime and corruption issues — load-shedding was 61% lower from December 2023 to February 2024 compared with the same period in 2022-23.
Energy Council chief executive James Mackay said that through the partnership, businesses had offered advisory support and resources to implement the government’s Energy Action Plan.
“Thanks to this joint effort, more than 3.5 gigawatts of grid capacity has been unlocked; 7.6GW of Requests for Proposals have been released to procure 5GW of renewable energy, 2GW of gas-to-power, and 0.6GW battery storage,” he said.
He added that in March this year, the National Energy Crisis Committee worked on improving five power stations, and 17 businesses had assigned resources to the partnership to support the plant performance turnaround at Eskom. This included business giving more than 4 000 hours working on a pro bono basis to support the project.
“This partnership has already led to successes. At Kusile [power station], business provided expertise and advice which led to 1 600 megawatts being added back to the grid as units were recovered two months ahead of schedule. At Matla [power station], two investigative teams were provided by business through the partnership — including mechanical and maintenance engineers,” Mackay said.
As South Africa marks six weeks
without load-shedding, Ramokgopa said at a press briefing on Monday that the energy outlook is more positive than initial forecasts: in May last year, Eskom forecast it would lose 1 500MW in May 2024 in the best case scenario, but it had only lost 1 400MW this year.
“Eskom, by its own admission, accepts that the kind of improvement that we have seen is so enduring that we can say to the country that we have clawed back 1 000MW compared to the same period the previous calendar year.”
Furthermore, the amount of electricity lost in the 12-month period from May 2023 to May 2024 decreased by 7 000MW from 18 196MW in May 2023 to 11 036MW this year.
“We have been able to recover as a result of the concerted efforts of these distinguished men and women, starting with the board and [to] the lowest member of the Eskom team, we were able to bring back 7 000MW. All indications suggest that we will continue to improve on this number,” he said.
Yelland also noted that Eskom’s unplanned breakdowns for the first 13 weeks of this year are consistently lower than for the first 13 weeks of last year. But he said this could be attributed to factors outside the partnership.
The reduction in load-shedding is a result of reduced dependency on Eskom’s grid as more people resort to solar rooftops, as well as photovoltaic and battery storage in the residential, commercial and agricultural sector, Yelland said. Another factor is the cost of electricity and consumers are using it more carefully and efficiently.
“Demand for electricity might not be going down. But demand for Eskom electricity is going down. If you look at Eskom, sales are going down. The amount of units of energy that they sell in the economy is going down. What is really happening is it’s being replaced by other sources of energy,” he said.
Ramokgopa said that many households and industries are rolling out solar power, a move triggered by the unreliability of the electricity grid, as well as by the government’s incentives.
Yelland said the B4SA partnership is welcomed because it encourages the government to open the door to the private sector to become part of the solution.
“There’s a high appetite for private sector participation in the electricity sector. Significant investment is going to have to come from the private sector because the government is financially constrained and so is Eskom.”
The B4SA partnership involves about 130 chief executives of companies with a combined market capitalisation of more than R11 trillion. The support from the private sector has resulted in about R170 million in funding and the mobilisation of more than 350 private sector experts to support their partners in the public sector.