According to the Minister in the Presidency for Electricity, Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, the health of South Africa’s electricity system is continuing to show improvement, despite continued load shedding.
“We have really turned the corner, and I’m not suggesting that we have ended load shedding,” he said on Tuesday, “I’m simply saying that we can see that there’s light at the end of the tunnel and this is not an oncoming train but it’s a system whose health continues to improve and improve at levels that even exceeded our projections and expectations.”
The average unplanned capacity loss factor has led to the fluctuation of generation capacity between 12 000MW and 15 000MW.
“We were sitting at about 14 100MW and then it went to 13 000MW in the past week,” said the Minister, “but what is important is that it’s only on the 16th of January where were above 15 000MW. Now today (23 January), we are at 12 700MW.”
The Minister revealed that over the past two weeks, available capacity has “consistently” exceeded peak demand. “That shows that the team has invested in and we are beginning to see those returns,” he said.
Reasons for the continuation of load shedding includes the 3 000MW of capacity that is drawn from open cycle gas turbines that rely on diesel, as well as scheduled planned maintenance.
“We have reduced our consumption of diesel,” said Ramokgopa, “so essentially it’s the true health of the system”. He went on to say: “Planned maintenance still is significantly high. We are hitting about 8 000 to 9 000MW of planned maintenance.”
The Minister emphasised that work continues to be done in the area of partial load losses. “The area that is receiving attention is the partial load losses of 6 700MW,” he said, “it is our collective view that we can do much better here. Of course some of it is a function of us exceeding our licence parameters, those are areas that require attention.”
Minister Ramokgopa’s message is that the system continues to improve and is headed in the right direction.
“It has exceeded our expectation,” he said, “if the unit measure of the expectation is the unplanned capacity loss factor of 14 500MW, we are way below that by about 1 000MW, despite the fact that planned maintenance is sitting at 8 337MW.”
Compiled by Warren Hawkins
