• Experts are being deployed to power stations with a low energy availability factor.
• These experts are tasked with addressing these failings and righting the ship.
• Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa however is adamant that demand side management can positively address Eskom’s problems while still giving customers the energy they need.

Government wants to improve the energy availability factor at a number of power stations around the country and so today an army of experts will descend on power stations with the worst energy availability factor in Eskom’s fleet.

These technical experts are supported by the Resource Mobilisation Fund which was launched earlier this year. The fund gives businesses a vehicle through which to support the Energy Action Plan and has raised R100 million to date.

The experts will visit Matla, Kriel, Majuba and Kendal Power Stations to address the low energy availability factor at each. Each expert selected to be part of the team comes highly recommended according to Electricity Minister, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa. Experts will be placed at power stations according to their specialities.

The experts include former Eskom employees and other “energy experts”. It remains to be seen whether this team will have a tangible effect on the situation at Eskom

Despite this team however, Ramokgopa appears to be insistent that demand side management – that is to say asking citizens to use less energy – can help limit loadshedding.

“Remember, we did say that there’s huge potential that can be derived on the demand side essentially, clawing back the megawatts on the demand side without necessarily interrupting households’ ability to get their daily requirements,” Ramokgopa said according to SA News.

According to Ramokgopa, Eskom could eliminate as many as three stages of loadshedding by managing electricity consumption more effectively. Part of this includes managing certain elements of a household such as geysers.

“According to recent Stats South Africa data, the country has at least 5.4 million electrical geysers connected to the grid. Studies show that the average daily energy consumption of these is about 6kWh. Assuming that 50 percent of this is consumed during the morning and evening peak hours, geysers’ average peak power demand is above 3.2 GW, a significant portion,” the minister said during a budget vote last week.

This does require help from municipalities and the likes of City of Johannesburg, City of Cape Town and Nelson Mandela Bay Metro have all planned or are rolling out demand side management initiatives.

The goal for now however, is to survive the Winter period and avoid the worst case scenario of Stage 8 loadshedding. With that having been said, the risk of a total grid collapse, while not currently probable, isn’t altogether impossible.

For now loadshedding has been suspended although Stage 2 is set to make a return at 16:00 on Monday.