Have you noticed the suspicious amount of electricity we have had lately? Well, the social media running joke is no longer that. According to a report in the Sunday Times, Eskom produced more electricity than necessary to meet demand for the entirety of July 2024, something that has not happened since 2018

Bheki Nxumalo, the head of generation, said at times, the utility produced 35000MW per day, or 8000MW more power than was needed to meet demand. This meant that it was able to shut down some of the old power stations over the weekends. This dramatic turnaround in fortunes is sustainable, according to electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, who delivered the good news to parliament last week.

So even though it has been 139 days and counting of no loadshedding (though some areas may experience “load reduction” from time to time), it isn’t “suspicous” at all! The worst of loadshedding may finally be behind us. 

Eskom’s plan to improve the performance of existing power stations, as well as the increase in renewable energy sources, has helped to improve electricity supply. The energy availability factor (EAF) reached 70% in July, which basically is the amount of power that all stations can generate over a period minus unavailabilities, such as when a station is taken offline for repairs. Eskom typically doesn’t include renewables in this calculation, so in reality, the picture is rosier than the EAF figure may suggest. Around 10% of our power comes from renewables at the moment, though that will doubtlessly grow in future.

As Eskom’s plants improve performance, less money is spent running the open-cycle gas turbines, which use diesel, and at the same time, more plants can be taken offline in a planned manner for servicing, which in turn improves performance. The utility may have spent up to R1 billion per month on diesel for the past five years.  

“Generation has been able to maintain the unplanned losses below 14,000MW throughout the winter period while leveraging the improved performance to conduct additional short-term planned capacity loss factor,” said Ramokogpa. 

This shouldn’t be reason for complacency, however. Loadshedding happened in the first place because Eskom did not properly plan to meet the demands of a growing economy and population, though the government knew this was coming from as far back as the late 1990s. Further investments will need to be made to increase our country’s electricity supply, especially as we look to transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy. There are mooted plans for new nuclear power stations, and the transmission grid will also need to be expanded in order to allow the private sector to plug in renewable energy sources into the grid. 

But for now, we can breathe a huge sigh of relief! The dog days of Stage 4 and Stage 6 may (hopefully!) be consigned to history forever.