In recent months, Eskom, South Africa’s state-owned power utility, has made significant strides in its maintenance efforts, resulting in improved generation capacity.
Former Eskom CEO André de Ruyter and former COO Jan Oberholzer had emphasized the importance of “reliability maintenance,” which involved taking plants out of service for overdue maintenance to enhance their performance.
However, an analysis by Moneyweb reveals that Eskom’s maintenance levels remained relatively unchanged in 2021 and 2022, hovering around 10% of generation capacity.
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With an approximate capacity of 48,000MW, this translates to 4,800-5,000MW of maintenance work. Although the level of planned maintenance increased after De Ruyter’s appointment, it never reached the desired 12% or 15% mark.
Nevertheless, a closer look at the last three months, from November to February, shows a significant turnaround. The energy availability factor (EAF), which measures the amount of available generation capacity, remained steady at an average of 25,000MW during this period.
According to Eskom data, only around 53% of capacity is available at any given time, with a slight improvement of 0.5%.
Unexpected breakdowns, or unplanned outages, have also shown improvement over the past 14 weeks compared to the previous year. On average, there has been a 7% reduction in breakdowns, equivalent to approximately 1,000MW of generation capacity.
Since the start of the year, unplanned maintenance has been 10% better than the previous year, resulting in a current management of around 15,000MW of breakdowns. Eskom’s commitment to meeting the power system demands during winter has led to a 37% increase in planned maintenance compared to last year.
This means that since the beginning of the year, up to 3,000MW of generation capacity has been taken offline for maintenance, with an average removal of nearly 2,300MW from the grid. This represents a 20% increase in maintenance compared to the previous year under De Ruyter’s leadership.
Despite the increased maintenance efforts, Eskom has managed to maintain its EAF at a consistent level. The reduction in unplanned maintenance has contributed to this stability. Over the past 14 weeks, planned maintenance on Eskom’s generation fleet has increased by 20% compared to the previous year, indicating a significant improvement.
The return to service of the three Kusile units, which were offline last year due to a flue duct collapse, has provided Eskom with additional headroom of over 2,000MW to conduct more maintenance. Breakdowns of coal units, the primary source of generation, have decreased by 7% in the last 14 weeks and over 10% since the beginning of the year.
This dispels the myth that maintenance levels were higher under De Ruyter’s leadership. A previous analysis by Moneyweb in January last year had already shown that this was not the case. The current data further supports this conclusion.
It is encouraging to see that Eskom is effectively managing higher levels of planned maintenance despite operating within a relatively tight power system. Additionally, the contribution of private rooftop photovoltaic solar during the day has helped alleviate some of the strain on the grid.
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