South Africa Celebrates 150 Days Without Loadshedding. New Utility-Scale Solar PV Auction Oversubscribed – CleanTechnica

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South Africans had been facing increasing electricity rationing (loadshedding) over the past couple of years. The effects of loadshedding on homes and businesses have been brutal, and the South African Reserve Bank says that during the higher stages of load shedding, where consumers can experience 12 hours of load shedding per day, South Africa was losing up to R900 million ($50 million) per day. There is some very good news for South Africans, though. Today, Eskom, South Africa’s national electricity company, announced a significant achievement of 150 consecutive days (equivalent to five months) without loadshedding.

This remarkable milestone reflects the successful implementation of Eskom’s Generation Recovery Plan, which began in March 2023. Eskom says the recovery plan has not only made Eskom’s power stations more reliable, but has also demonstrated enhanced efficiency in its operations. As a result, there has been a remarkable reduction in diesel expenditure, approximately R10.60 billion, which is 75% less compared to the same time last year. Eskom maintained an average Energy Availability Factor (EAF) of 68% over the past seven days, with the best-performing stations—Kusile, Kendal, Majuba, Lethabo, and the Peaking stations—recording an EAF of 70%. Additionally, three more power stations have achieved an EAF above 60%. This improvement is due to the continued benefits of accelerating and executing planned maintenance, partnering with the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and the dedication of power station managers and their teams.

Eskom says its operational efficiency continues to surpass its winter expectations, with current unplanned outages averaging between 9,800 MW and 10,900 MW over the past seven days. Today’s figure is 10,482 MW, which is 5,018 MW lower than the winter 2024 forecast. This results in an available generation capacity of 31,963MW, while yesterday evening’s peak forecast (23 August 2024) was 26,420MW.

The intensive loadshedding experienced by South Africans led to a rush by homes and business to install rooftop solar, backed by battery storage in most cases. South African homes and businesses have added 3,526 MW of rooftop solar in just two years! It is just wonderful to see how fast electricity generation capacity can be added from rooftop solar. According to data from South Africa’s national electricity utility company, Eskom, there were about 2,264.5 MW of rooftop solar PV installed in South Africa as of July 2022. According to Eskom’s latest update, South African homes and businesses have now installed 5,790.5 MW of solar PV. Adding the contribution from rooftops and other distributed solar plants, the total installed renewable capacity in South Africa now stands at 12,221 MW! This growth in distributed solar PV, plus the 2.3 GW of utility-scale PV, is now contributing to South Africa’s own duck curve.

There is more good news. For South Africa’s 7th Bid Window Under The Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP BW7), a total of 8,526 MW of bids for solar PV were received against a target of 1,800 MW. For wind, 1,692 MW of bids were received against target of 3,200 MW. It would be super cool if all the bids received for solar and wind could be accommodated during the adjudication and funding for all arranged if possible. That would supercharge South Africa’s wind and solar installed capacity to 22.4 GW! That is excluding all the additional rooftop solar from homes and that would be deployed between now and finalisation of the REIPPPP BW7. Several factors would need to be considered and taken care of to accommodate all that solar and wind received in REIPPPP BW7, such as availability of grid capacity for interconnection as well as funding of projects outside the targets. Would be super cool though if it happened.