Eskom CEO Andre De Ruyter has outlined the state of Eskom’s electricity generation system, painting a bleak picture of load-shedding for the next few years.

“Openness and transparency are critical pillars of any organisation, even more apt for Eskom as a state-owned enterprise,” said De Ruyter, who was speaking at the company’s latest State of the System briefing.

“The status of the system briefing today gives us yet another opportunity to be transparent about Eskom’s operations and to keep South Africans and all stakeholders informed.”

As a result of Eskom’s reliability maintenance programme, which sees the power utility take plants offline to fix major defects and improve reliability, the company’s energy availability factor (EAF) declines and this will lead to an increased risk of load-shedding.

“At the System update of January 2020, we indicated the launch of our reliability maintenance programme, and highlighted the increased risk of load-shedding while this programme is implemented,” De Ruyter said.

“Despite the initial challenges posed by the national COVID-19 lockdowns, we have sustained high levels of maintenance, with planned maintenance gradually increasing to between 5,500MW and 7,000MW, or approximately 12% of Eskom’s total capacity.”

This planned maintenance paired with the increasing shortfall in capacity means that the risk of load-shedding will not go away any time soon.

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Source: MyBroadband