By Tannur Anders
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) -South Africa could have no scheduled power cuts over the next seven months if state-owned utility Eskom’s unplanned electricity losses stay at their current level, its chief executive said on Monday.
Power cuts have restricted economic growth in South Africa for more than a decade, with outages on a record 335 days last year.
But Eskom has not implemented power cuts in more than 150 days, since late March, after a big improvement in the performance of its fleet of mainly coal-fired power stations that caught many analysts off-guard.
CEO Dan Marokane told a briefing on the outlook for the upcoming southern hemisphere summer months, September to March, that there had been a sustained improvement in Eskom’s plant performance over the winter months, April to August.
Unplanned capacity losses have averaged around 12 gigawatts or 12,000 megawatts in the past four months, down from peak losses of about 18 gigawatts a year earlier.
“For this coming summer (the) prognosis is that if we stay below 13,000 megawatts of unplanned losses, we will be able to avoid load-shedding,” Marokane said, using a term for power cuts.
As well as increased electricity availability at Eskom coal stations including Tutuka, Kendal and Kriel, renewable energy projects operated by independent producers have also delivered more electricity over the past year.
Marokane said Eskom should be able to say early next year when “load-shedding at the chronic level that it was is behind us,” with an additional 2.5 gigawatts of generation capacity coming online in the next few months.
(Reporting by Tannur AndersEditing by Alexander Winning)
