South Africa: Black Rule: Electricity hits a new low! – 50% availability! – My Comments

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[Everything they touch falls apart. The stupid Black Jew who runs SA is currently laughed at openly in South Africa even by the non-Whites. We Whites can break out of this. We can rule ourselves. Jan]

Eskom’s energy availability factor (EAF) has dropped to 50.84%, a new low for February.

Energy expert and EE Business Intelligence boss Chris Yelland said the drop wasn’t surprising, considering Eskom was forced to implement stage 6 load-shedding in mid-February.

The EAF is a critical performance measure for the power utility’s generation fleet and reflects the proportion of capacity available for providing electricity to South Africa.

“Not surprisingly, after a week of load-shedding up to stage 6, the week-on-week Eskom Energy Availability Factor (EAF) for Week 6, 2024, continued its drop to 50.84%,” said Yelland.

He added that this figure is lower than the “very low figures” for the same time in 2023, despite the return of three 800MW coal-fired units at Kusile power station in November 2023.

Yelland published the chart below to show Eskom’s EAF from 2021 until now. The green line on the bottom left shows the 2024 EAF year-to-date.

The declining EAF means Eskom has less capacity available to serve the country’s electricity needs.

The power utility’s average EAF has declined from around 70% in 2019 to 50.84% for the year-to-date, meaning there isn’t sufficient generation capacity to meet South Africa’s demand, resulting in load-shedding.

To end load-shedding, Eskom must improve its EAF or add more generation capacity to its grid.

In January 2023, Eskom chair Mpho Makwana announced the board’s turnaround plan to improve generation performance and ultimately end load-shedding.

Eskom’s board and management were given targets to return the EAF to above 70% gradually. The EAF was to reach 60% by 31 March 2023, 65% by 31 March 2024, and 70% by 31 March 2025.

However, the opposite appears to be happening, with Eskom’s EAF slipping further away from government’s targets.

It missed its March 2023 target of 60% by a large margin and is almost fifteen percentage points short of hitting its March 2024 target.

In January 2024, Yelland told MyBroadband that he doesn’t believe Eskom will be able to improve the EAF of its existing fleet.

Chris Yelland, managing director at EE Business Intelligence
“They say we’re gonna improve Eskom’s EAF,” said Yelland. “You know, we’ve been waiting for years for this to happen. If it was so easy, do it.”

He explained that the EAF measure comes from 80 different generators and meaningfully increasing it would require Eskom to carry out an unrealistic amount of planned maintenance.

“If you want to improve the average EAF, you’ve got to work on all 80 generators,” said Yelland.

“You can’t do that in a short time, and you can’t do it simultaneously — you’d have to shut down the whole of South Africa.”

Instead, he believes South Africa should focus on adding new generation capacity to the grid, which the private sector will drive.

“New generation is not gonna come from Eskom because the Treasury has said no more new generation capacity from Eskom as a condition of their bailout,” he said.

“The solutions are gonna come from the private sector.”

False promises to end load-shedding
Several politicians, including President Cyril Ramophosa, ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula, and electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, all promised that load-shedding would be a thing of the past by 2024.

However, some of their proposed deadlines have passed, and there is still no end in sight.

In October 2023, Ramokgopa promised that load-shedding would decrease significantly in the coming months and end entirely in 2024.

He said this was due to additional capacity being lined up to be added to the grid, including the Kusile power station’s three 800MW units.

However, Mbalula made far more ambitious promises, saying load-shedding would be a thing of the past by the end of 2023.

“Load-shedding, before the end of the year, should be something of the past,” he said in an interview with Power to Truth’s JJ Tabane.

President Cyril Ramaphosa

Despite his promises, South Africa has experienced Eskom’s rotational power cuts since the beginning of 2024, with load-shedding reaching a peak of stage 6 in February.

Load-shedding restarted in 2024 came after an almost three-week streak of no power cuts during December 2023.

President Cyril Ramaphosa also said load-shedding would end before 2024. However, he changed his tune slightly during his 2024 State of the Nation Address, when he said the “worst of load-shedding is behind South Africa“.

He added that the end of load-shedding was in sight.

The country was plunged into stage 6 power cuts two days later.

Source: https://mybroadband.co.za/news/energy/525579-eskom-power-plants-hit-new-low.html