Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa. (Photo: Per-Anders Pettersson/Getty Images)
Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa says Eskom is implementing lower stages of load-shedding to avoid overspending funds allocated for diesel for this financial year, which ends on 31 March.
Speaking during his energy update, Ramokgopa said: “While they [Eskom] have not overspent the diesel funding, for as long as there is no internal or external communication of additional financing, they need to manage the exploitation of these units in a way that they don’t pressure Eskom’s balance sheet by implementing stages of load-shedding that still allow the economy to go on.”
Eskom has been implementing low stages of load-shedding since the beginning of the year, with the highest being stage three.
To compensate for its poor-performing power plants, Eskom uses diesel to run the open cycle gas turbines to reduce higher stages of load-shedding. But, the diesel used to power them is costly.
Last week, Ramokgopa said Eskom has only R4 billion of its R29 billion diesel budget left for the financial year.
During the 2023 financial year, Eskom spent R21 billion on diesel — much higher than its budgeted amount of R6.1 billion.
In its November financial results, Eskom warned that its operational and financial performance is set to worsen because its finances continue on a downward trend. Eskom said it expects to record a financial loss of R23.2 billion in the 2024 financial year because of the poor performance of its power plants.
Ramokgopa said systems were beginning to show improvement. “If you look at what has been the trend is that the capacity available relative to what is planned maintenance forecast is that consistently the capacity available is greater than night peak demand [6pm to 9pm].
He said although Eskom can meet this demand, load-shedding is still being implemented because some of the generating capacity relies on Eskom’s emergency reserves.
“It is because 3 000 megawatts of the capacity available is drawn from the open cycle gas turbine, which uses diesel and we have reduced our consumption of diesel.”