Big turn for load shedding in South Africa

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The last three weeks of load shedding suspensions during the day have significantly impacted South Africa’s load shedding trendline, which is slowly starting to filter through to more positive longer-term trend data.

This is according to the latest Power Availability Statistics for the 25th week of the year, compiled by independent energy analyst, Pieter Jordaan.

While South Africans more commonly use total hours of load shedding to gauge how bad outages are in the country, Jordaan’s data looks at more impactful points like blackout hours (i.e., actual time spent in the dark) and the Power Availability Ratio (PAR) of the grid.

PAR represents the time consumers have utility power available after deducting the load shedding outage times, expressed as a percentage. At 100%, households have full access to grid power. Every 7% below that point represents a full stage of load shedding where power is taken away.

Tracking PAR over a moving seven days (PAR-7), the ratio climbed 19 percentage points to 91% two weeks ago when power utility Eskom had managed to consistently suspend load shedding for most of the day.

This represented the fastest weekly recovery rate ever, Jordaan said – with the improvement markedly better than that seen in late March / early April when the easter break allowed for lower stages of load shedding to take place.

Cooler weather, lower demand, and improved generation (EAF of 59%) has helped Eskom keep effective load shedding at around stage 1 for the past three weeks, Jordaan said, adding that lower levels of cartel criminality at the coal-fired plants may also have contributed to the sustained improvement.

Notably, the improvement isn’t an anomaly, as over the same period last year there was also a 3-week period of load shedding respite. This, however, was followed by the worst levels of load shedding (at the time), sparked by employee criminality during wage negotiations.

Eskom has successfully negotiated a wage deal with workers this year, so the risk of the same happening again has been mitigated.

Longer view

While the PAR-7 shows a strong turn for load shedding in South Africa, the longer-term data is still showing a downward trend.

More specifically, the PAR-364 – a year-on-year view – shows that load shedding remains significantly worse than in 2022, with the trend line only now starting to flatten out.

Positively, though, the quarterly view (PAR-91) broke through the 75% resistance line on 14 June and has managed to stay afloat for 11 days.

The 75% resistance line represents an average of stage 4 load shedding – the point that separates low and high stages of outages.

A monthly view of the data (PAR-28) shows that May remained below the 72% mark for the entire month. May was the worst month of load shedding on record having seen 109 outages (244 hours, or 10 whole days) at an average of 7.9 hours per day, beating the previous record of 7.1 hr/day held by February 2023.

The PAR for May was 67.2% (average stage 4.7) versus 70.6% (average stage 4.2) for February 2023.

Showing the significance of the turnaround in June, the PAR for June will likely settle at around 90% (average stage 1.3) – the best monthly PAR in 10 months and a 3.5 stage improvement over May’s record low, Jordaan said.

Warnings

While South Africans are breathing a sigh of relief and enjoying the reprieve from full-day load shedding, energy experts have warned against complacency, noting that load shedding remains in full effect.

Data from the Outlier and EskomsePush shows that load shedding has been in effect for 3,861 hours in 2023. There has only been one day where load shedding was fully suspended.

In terms of blackout hours – time actually spent in the dark – South Africans have spent 44 full days (1,056 hours) without electricity. Jordaan’s modelling projects this will be 92 days (~2,200 hours) by the end of the year.

Eskom is currently load shedding at stage 1 during the day after delays in returning generating units to the grid – a sudden change that was implemented on Wednesday. This reinforced that the grid is under strain and volatile and conditions can change at short notice.

The government and Eskom have urged South Africans at large to use power sparingly.


Read: Daytime load shedding is back for the rest of the week – here’s the new schedule

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