TINUS DE JAGER: If my calculation is correct, we are approaching 40 days without load shedding here in South Africa. While I’m not particularly superstitious, I am certainly holding thumbs while I say that Eskom – without burning exceptionally large amounts of diesel to generate electricity, if one examines the statistics – has had the longest period without load shedding since December 2021 and January 2022, when we had an unbroken electricity supply for almost two months.

Tonight I am chatting to Thomas Conradie, the general manager for engineering generation at Eskom. Good evening, Thomas. Welcome to the programme. What is actually going on right now?

THOMAS CONRADIE: Good evening, Tinus, and thank you for the opportunity to participate in your programme. It’s certainly not just a matter of luck. We are very proud, after a lot of hard work both inside and outside Eskom, to have experienced – if tonight goes well – 37 days without load shedding, and we are doing everything in our power to build on that.

As you know, a year and a half ago – as part of government’s national energy crisis committee that was appointed – Eskom began putting shoulder to the wheel, together with the new board. We developed a recovery plan for power generation within Eskom, by means of which we assiduously developed an intensive and comprehensive maintenance programme over a period. So what we have found is that after all the hard work we are seeing the fruits of our labour, for which we are very grateful and proud.

TINUS DE JAGER: Thomas, a few commentators – including the Inkatha Freedom Party today – say billions of litres of diesel are being burnt ahead of the elections to keep the lights on. Is that true, is it a fair statement?

THOMAS CONRADIE: Tinus, yes, to run the open-cycle gas turbines is expensive. They consume a huge amount of diesel when operating. But the open-cycle gas turbines are part of our generation fleet, and that is what they are there for – to be used during peak electricity demand.

So the current position is that we are using the open-cycle gas turbines at times during the morning to service the morning demand, and then a couple of the turbines in the evening for the evening peak, which is much higher, especially as we move into the cooler months.

It is acceptable practice to use your so-called ‘peak plants’ to serve the peaks. That is certainly more cost-effective than running many base-load generation units to service those peaks all the time.

So yes, we are using the open-cycle gas turbines. We don’t use them excessively, and we use them very much within their capacities and within their design criteria, certainly not overworking them.

TINUS DE JAGER: If we look at what Eskom and the energy minister have said, are there renewable energy sources also assisting? Sunlight is of course important and sunshine hours are rapidly reducing as winter approaches. When I entered the studio today it was already dark. Do you think we are facing a difficult winter season, Thomas?

THOMAS CONRADIE: Yes, that is certainly the case. Photovoltaic renewable energy in particular – the so-called PV panels – we know have been rolled out very aggressively across the country, especially the so-called behind-the-meter renewable energy sources, where private people and private businesses have erected solar panelling to counter load shedding.

According to our calculations, there is currently around 5 440MW currently available in terms of so-called behind-the-meter solar panels and solar energy.

But one needs to understand that this is only during the day while the sun is shining and doesn’t help much in terms of the peak demand during the evening and morning – especially during the winter months when it is already dark. But these panels certainly assist in providing a lot of energy if weather permits, thus complementing our reserves so that we can build reserves from our pumped storage plants to service the evening peak.

In terms of the winter ahead, yes, last Friday [26 April], we had a media conference to present our winter plan to the media, in which we also indicated that we are in a far better position than during the past winter. Last year we at times saw a 17 000MW and even as much as an 18 000MW loss. But we have now brought this down to 14 000/15 000MW. In the past few days, we even managed to bring it below 12 000MW, which fills us with pride.

All of that helps us to make more capacity available for the winter months. So as for our winter plan, our planning base, there will be an unplanned 14 000MW capacity loss in the order of Stage 1 or Stage 2 load shedding. Only should it get to 17 000MW becoming unavailable will we have Stage 5 load shedding. So we are certainly in a much better situation, whereas last winter we expected load shedding to reach Stage 8, which we fortunately never reached and were able to avoid.

TINUS DE JAGER: Thomas, yesterday [Thursday, 2 May] we saw very positive numbers in the purchasing managers’ index, the PMI, and the experts referred to the absence of load shedding having affected sentiment in a positive way. How long before we again see load shedding? You said we were at 37 days now; how much further [can this persist]?

THOMAS CONRADIE: We are deeply aware of the hugely negative impact of implementing load shedding, and your previous speaker discussed that. So we will do everything in our power to avoid it and keep avoiding it. It’s very difficult to say when and whether we will again have load shedding, simply because of the many variables, both on the demand side of electricity and the supply side. To give you an idea, weather plays a great role when it comes to the demand side in terms of people using more electricity in colder weather, and especially if it is particularly cloudy over our more densely populated areas like Gauteng. That’s when we see a clear reduction on the electricity supply side as well, owing to solar panels providing less.

So it’s very difficult to predict. We believe we will be in a far better position this winter than last winter, and we courageously anticipate that we can stay so for longer.

TINUS DE JAGER: Thanks very much, Thomas. That was Thomas Conradie, engineering generation general manager at Eskom. We will join him in that optimism.