https://www.news24.com/citypress/business
Eskom's power stations have become increasingly reliable over the past month and this is one of the major factors why South Africa continues to avoid load shedding, despite the onset of winter.
The country last experienced load shedding on 26 March.
Where previously Eskom's generation capacity was out of action between 30% and 35%, due to unexpected breakdowns, this figure now stands at around 25%.
Although still high, an improvement of five percentage points means there is nearly 2 500MW of extra power on the network. This spares the country more than two phases of load shedding.
Chris Yelland, managing director of EE Business Intelligence, says it appears that Eskom is beginning to reverse the trend of broken power stations.
Although the cold winter weather now firmly grips the country, with a corresponding increase in the demand for electricity, the improvement in Eskom's performance could prevent load shedding this winter.
If Eskom's forecast for the next 52 weeks is adjusted for the extra 2 500MW currently available, South Africans can expect only two weeks of load shedding for the rest of this year - the first in the week of 23 September and the second in the week of 28 October.
The latest improvement comes after the figures had already started to look better when Eskom reactivated the three units of Kusile late last year, which had been out of action for almost the whole year. This had already brought about an improvement of about five percentage points.
Since last year's load shedding nightmare, Eskom now has about 5 000MW extra available to keep the lights on.
According to Yelland, there seems to be an improvement in the quality of Eskom's maintenance work too. The power utility had previously said that units that were repaired often broke down again shortly thereafter.
"Eskom has more funds available and the National Treasury is more willing to cooperate with purchases. They can therefore buy parts and work more closely with the manufacturers of the original components," he says.
The better performance of Eskom's fleet and the increasing amount of renewable energy sources create more room for the power giant to take units out of service for maintenance. The pressure to keep them operational to keep the lights on is now significantly less, says Yelland.
He says time will tell whether Eskom can maintain the improvement of the past four weeks. "We know we can have a good month and we can have a bad month."
