Power utility Eskom has hailed its Generation Operational Recovery Plan (GORP) which it extols for improving the Energy Availability Factor (EAF) from 50% to 55% over the year to January this year.
Eskom has countered that unplanned outages have also taken a positive turn from 34% of the generation capacity in January 2023 to 30% in January 2024.
This is because energy analysts maintain nothing barring a miracle will help it attain the 65% EAF by March 2024 and 70% by March 2025.
In response to criticism that it was going backwards in its goals as the EAF, its core measure of performance that indicates the percentage of time the power station was available for use when it was needed, fell to a new low of 50.84% in February, Eskom said the improvement was a break from the average 3.8% linear decline in the EAF that had been recorded since 2018.
"The gradual improvement brought about by the GORP is starting to be visible in as far as the frequency and intensity of load shedding in the past five and half months, September 2023 to mid-February 2024," Eskom said.
Eskom said the improvement of the EAF and unplanned outages is as a result of concerted efforts focusing on priority power stations (Kusile, Kendal, Majuba, Matla, Tutuka and Duvha) where each power station has its own detailed recovery plan.
Eskom said a total of 3 510MW was recovered by January 2024 through these interventions as it took a conscious decision to increase its planned maintenance during the summer period to an average of 8 000MW.
It said a comparison of load shedding between December 2022 and February 2023 and in the same period between December 2023 to 16 February 2024, indicates that there was a reduction of load shedding hours from 1 801.25 hours to 1 217.98 hours, which is about 600 hours less.
Economic Intervention Forum of South Africa (Eifsa) CEO Mthunzi Luthuli said it was way too early for Eskom to claim victories and that it needed to sustain an increase in the EAF for at least a quarter before it could gloat.
"What tends to happen is that Eskom uses numbers from too short a period, there is absolutely no conclusion you can make in such volatility of the load shedding schedule. If the EAF has improved 5% over the year, let them sustain that and not have it drop to 52% in the middle of February while they claim improvement," Luthuli said.
Luthuli said the 65% unmet target was in itself far lower than the 80% Eskom should be at.
Energy Analyst Chris Yelland said the decline is also despite the return of three 800MW coal-fired units at the Kusile power station in November 2023 and the synchronisation of Kusile Unit 4 to the grid in the following month.
"I am with stage 4 load shedding as we speak, the latest Eskom EAF for week 7 is 52.79% with the year to date slightly lower than the same period last year. There appears to be no chance of achieving the set targets barring a miracle. " Yelland said.
Eskom’s last hit the 60% EAF range in October last year with the required margin at 70% to ensure energy sufficiency.
Another analyst said comparing year-to-date EAF versus the average in 2023 shows that EAF is underperforming by 3.14 percentage points and that comparing to the same period in 2023 shows that, year-to-date, EAF is underperforming by 0.56 percentage points.
According to Eskom's data, EAF in week 7 ended on Saturday averaged 52.8%, a slight improvement from the 50.8% recorded the week ended February 10th, which was slightly higher than the same week in 2023 which recorded 52.7%.
"I have said earlier that if Eskom can maintain its EAF at the same or at a similar value to that in 2023, it will be doing well," Yelland said.
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