- Ongoing planned maintenance continues at high levels, with unplanned outages showing a year-on-year reduction of approximately 2.9%.
South Africa’s state owned energy utility, Eskom, reports that loadshedding remains suspended, with the power system remaining stable. Emergency reserves are adequate and being used strategically to meet peak demand, while ongoing planned maintenance continues at 14.85% of generation capacity, marking a 3.8% increase compared to the same period last year.
The high level of planned maintenance aims to enhance fleet reliability for the anticipated increased peak winter demand while also ensuring compliance with environmental and regulatory requirements. Currently, 7 402MW of the generation capacity is under planned maintenance.
The Unplanned Capacity Loss Factor (UCLF), or unplanned outages, for the financial year-to-date (1 to 10 April 2025), stands at 28.50%, improving by an ~2.85% from 31.35% achieved in the same period last year.
Eskom has spent R3.6 billion on diesel over the past 30 days, (12 March to 10 April 2025) representing a 2.5% decrease compared to the previous 30-day period.
A total of 3 130MW will be returned to service before the evening peak on Monday, 14 April 2025, to further stabilise the grid.
Leading into winter
South Africa still finds itself short of a capacity buffer to offset the flux of generation units going offline and others coming online. The ten peaking stations do not have the capacity to pick up when multiple unplanned shortfalls in generation capacity occur. Some peaking stations are used outside of their purpose to run 24/7 to provide baseload power. What does this mean leading into winter when demand for power picks up?
The average Eskom Energy Availability Factor (EAF) for the 2025 calendar year to date IS 56.59%, some way off the target set by the incumbent leadership of 70%.
Respected energy analyst, Chris Yelland explains that the EAF has been flat year to date and much lower than forecast in the Generation Recovery Plan. Yelland nites that for the last 2 weeks, the EAF has dropped below the EAF for the same period last year when the country was experiencing high levels of loadshedding on a regular basis.
“If this trend continues, and the EAF does not significantly increase as demand increases with the onset of colder weather, I think we are likely to experience some loadshedding but noting that EAF will rise with decreased PCLF (planned maintenance outages) in the coming months, and hopefully also with reduced UCLF (unplanned outages) too,” said Yelland.
Yelland adds that we are also led to expect the return to service by end April 2025 of Medupi Unit 4 which will reduce the UCLF if successful.
“Kusile Unit 6 has also been synchronised to the grid but is undergoing commissioning (i.e. not reliable power for the next 5 months until handed over for commercial service). This will increase supply in due course and reduce the probability of loadshedding. But Kusile Unit 1 is out of service till end June 2025 for flue gas desulphurisation plant reinstatement, and Koeberg Unit 1 is also out of service for containment building overpressure leakage testing. So I do think the situation remains tight and we may experience intermittent load shedding in the months ahead,” said Yelland.
Author: Bryan Groenendaal
