Eskom has spent R5.92 billion on Open Cycle Gas Turbines (OCGTs) in the past six months between April 1, 2024 and October 3, 2024, to prevent load shedding.
South Africa has not experienced any load shedding blackouts in the past 193 days, a drastic change in fortunes after unprecedented bouts of load shedding between 2022 and 2023, where the country was plunged into darkness for 527 days between both years.
The state utility admitted on Friday that it had to use diesel-fuelled auxiliary turbines to keep the power on.
Eskom used the diesel turbines to help units after 2,685 megawatts of capacity failed to return to service on September 23, 2024.
Eskom has been plagued in recent months by plant outages which have led to extensive usage and more pressure on the national grid, and as a result, have had to rely on open-cycle gas turbines.
The recent cold snaps over the country have also played a role.
“Additionally, higher-than-expected electricity demand driven by cold weather has contributed to this situation,” Eskom said.
Eskom said that the use of OCGTs generated 883 GWh of electricity which equated to 66% (R11.51 billion) less than the R17.43 billion spent last year over the same period for 2,862.32GWh. This represents significant improvements on the diesel bill compared to previous years.
South Africa has had uninterrupted power supply since March 26, 2024.
“Eskom’s Energy Availability Factor (EAF) averaged 61% over the past week and 63.2% year-to-date. The top-performing stations such as Kusile, Majuba, Camden, and the peaking stations maintained an EAF above 70%,” according to the utility.
In August, Energy and Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa explained:
“If your EAF is up, it means that you are less reliant on the OCGT. So you are burning less and less diesel. Since the beginning of the financial year, we have brought down the use of diesel by 73%. So we have saved about R9.6 billion compared to the same period last year. That’s significant.
“It’s good for Eskom’s own balance sheet and its liquidity. We can reinvest this money back into the people and into the [generating] units so that we can continue to see the kind of phenomenal improvements that we have been seeing and we can stave off load shedding,” he said, adding that the OCGT was now only used when needed.
The state utility said that the Unplanned Capacity Loss Factor (UCLF) was at around 25.4% for the financial year to date (April 2024 to October 3, 2024), improving from 34.14% in the corresponding period last year.
“This reduction in UCLF represents a -8.7% improvement compared to the same period last year. Unplanned outages of the generation units averaged 11,181MW during the past seven days, compared to 14,743MW in the corresponding week last year,” Eskom said.
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