With colder weather conditions expected across the country and the demand for electricity projected to increase, South Africans can make a huge difference by rallying towards the common cause of using electricity efficiently, which has the potential to reduce demand by up to 500 MW – saving the equivalent of one unit at a power station.

In April, State-owned power utility Eskom indicated that it now has a better understanding of the root causes of breakdowns following work done by its technical review team and has a reliable maintenance plan for its plant, with maintenance being prioritised over this period.

“We have done an extensive winter plan and review of our power system and identified the problems. While the plan gives us confidence that we may go through winter with no or limited load-shedding, we are mindful of the potential risks on a very tight power system which may result in shifts on the power system and which could result in load-shedding.

“We have mapped out scenarios that show that we will implement load-shedding in cases where unplanned breakdowns increase to more than 9 500 MW, delays in returning units from planned maintenance or in cases of unanticipated disruptive events,” says Eskom CEO Phakamani Hadebe.

According to the winter plan for last month, three days were significantly tight with a high risk of load-shedding. Eskom was successful in keeping the lights on as a result of improved performance of commercial units which resulted in unplanned breakdown of around 8 500 MW. Non-commercial units at Medupi and Kusile also contributed about 1 200 MW.

“The first few days in April have given reassurance of the integrity of our plan as we managed to avoid load-shedding on three days where it was forecast owing to the good performance of our plant. We managed to go through periods of high demand in the evening peak without using a lot of diesel,” notes Hadebe.

Over the next month, Eskom expects additional power from generation units that were out for planned maintenance – which is currently at about 6 000 MW and will ramp down to about 2 000 MW towards the highest demand period this month. Two units that were on long-term outages at Kriel and Matla (1 050 MW) will also be returned to service. Kusile 3 is also expected to synchronise to the grid for the first time towards the end of April. Imports from Cahora Bassa are expected to be back at full load.

“We promise to keep our customers informed about the state of our power system on a continuous basis. We also appeal to South Africans to continue using electricity sparingly as we count on getting up to 500 MW savings from demand management. It was encouraging to see that South Africans’ response to switch off their lights during Earth Hour on March 30, 2019, yielded savings of 554 MW so we have shown that it can be done.”

Eskom implemented its ‘Use electricity smartly’ campaign in April. The aim of the campaign is to help reduce electricity usage so that South Africans can rally together to reduce the need for load-shedding.