- Eskom has spent at least 70% less year-on-year on diesel compared to the same period last year – equating to savings of more than R14 billion.
- Unplanned outages show a big reduction as planned maintenance outages ramps up, resulting in an increase in the state owned utility’s energy availability factor.
- This as the power utility has maintained no load shedding for more than seven months.
Eskom says they continue to focus on maximising efficiencies from the investments made in the Generation Recovery Plan. “This has resulted in year-on-year diesel savings of R14.6 billion, approximately 70.3% less than the R20.8 billion spent during the same period last year. Further savings are expected in the coming weeks and months due to the improved performance of the coal fleet,” the power utility said.
Furthermore, Eskom has recorded a “significant decrease” in unplanned outages at power stations – allowing the power utility to do planned maintenance. “Over the past seven days, the average total unplanned outages have been 10 127MW, a significant decrease from 16 892MW during the same period last year, representing a reduction of 6 765MW.
“This ongoing improvement in reducing unplanned outages enables Eskom to carry out more planned maintenance activities and ensures that more generation capacity is available to meet the country’s electricity demand,” Eskom said.
The Energy Availability Factor (EAF) has also seen an increase to 63.1% for the year to date, with at least four power stations reaching an EAF of over 70%. Eskom is well-capacitated to meet the electricity demand.
The latest Eskom week-on-week energy availability factor EAF for 2024. Data source: Eskom/Chris Yelland. Chris is an energy analyst, consultant, electrical engineer, public speaker, writer and MD at EE Business Intelligence (Pty) Ltd. Follow Chris on X – @chrisyelland
“By Monday evening, an additional 4 050MW is expected to return online, with four units on cold reserve this weekend to manage the supply and demand balance,” the power utility said.
Eskom said although it continues to produce sustained improvements, there are overloading challenges in certain areas. Eskom continues to face network overloading issues in certain local areas due to illegal connections, vandalism, meter tampering, unauthorised network operations, theft of network equipment, and purchasing electricity from unlicensed vendors.
Author: Bryan Groenendaal
