Christmas is just 10 days away and South Africans are bracing themselves for a festive season filled with load-shedding, while Eskom is facing hit after hit, including looming court action over its load-reduction programme.

The embattled power utility’s Christmas stocking is bulging for all the wrong reasons:

• Resignation of CEO André de Ruyter
• 3 390 hours (141 days) of load-shedding in 2022 (as of December 14, according to EskomSePush)
• Debt of R400b
• Municipal debt of R53b
• Load-shedding cost to the economy of around R3b per day
• Court action over load-reduction.

South Africans are still in the dark about load-shedding during Christmas and New Year, with Eskom unable to provide a definite answer on whether the lights will stay on. However, the power utility anticipates planned maintenance of between 8 956 and 10 806MW, meaning there will be only 23 185 to 25 035MW of available capacity for the 2022/2023 festive season.

According to the latest outlook, there could be a shortage of at least 1 000MW in generating capacity (15 200MW breakdowns) between December 19 and January 1, and this could increase to over 2 001MW (16 700MW breakdowns).

Eskom’s 25 power stations are at present able to produce electricity only 56% of the time. This is way down from the 85% achieved 11 years ago. Government has a benchmark of 75% for the Energy Availability Factor.

In June, Meridian Economics published an independent study with warnings of up to a fourfold increase in power cuts in 2023, compared with 2021, and a tenfold increase in 2026.

Load reduction

When load-shedding was implemented in 2007, the last day of load-shedding for the year was December 12, with the first day of interrupted power supply in 2008 on January 9. In the following years, the festive season load-shedding schedule was as follows:

• December 2008/January 2009 – 2017/2018: None in December/January
• 2018/2019: December 8; none in January
• 2019/2020: December 13; January 4
• 2020/2021: December 31; January 6
• 2021/2022: December 5; none in January

Added burden of load-reduction

While load-shedding has been part of the South African landscape for 15 years, load-reduction first appeared in May 2020, with the programme intended to address localised distribution problems.

At the time, Eskom stated it had to safeguard its assets ‘from repeated failure and explosions as a result of overloading caused by illegal connections, meter bypasses and tampering with electricity infrastructure’.

The power utility was at pains to explain that load-reduction was not instituted as a result of its precarious financial position or a manner of debt collection, saying it was ‘purely implemented to protect assets and reduce operational costs and inconvenience to paying customers’.

For the past two-and-a-half years, the power utility has continued to reinforce its initial message of load-reduction – that it is meant to protect its infrastructure by reducing electricity usage during peak hours in areas with frequent overloading and equipment failure. Areas are identified through periodic impact analysis of electricity theft.

In May this year, Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha said: “Eskom’s electricity supply networks were designed for a specific amount of demand. Load-reduction is implemented to manage these risks.”

According to Eskom, 30% of the power utility’s generating capacity, or around 13 500MW, has not been paid for or is being stolen. Apart from theft and non-payment, meter tampering, vandalism and unauthorised operations are part of these ‘non-technical losses’.

In the 2020/2021 financial year, the cost of vandalism and meter tampering was estimated at R2.3b, with the theft of cables, overhead lines, transformers and conductors at around R2b.

Last month, De Ruyter said in a radio interview that South Africans could be spared at least one stage of load-shedding were it not for the sabotage of its equipment, plants and infrastructure. The company spends more than R3b a year on added private security in this regard.

‘No connection to municipal debt’

Despite repeated requests by Caxton Local Media for a detailed breakdown of the municipalities affected by load-reduction, Eskom only responded by saying ‘load-reduction is applied in areas where the network load exceeds the designed capabilities of the installed equipment’.

It added that load-reduction is implemented daily, in all the areas that exceed their equipment capacity, except during load-shedding.

Ninety-six of South Africa’s 278 municipalities are in arrears on their Eskom accounts. Twenty-one of the municipalities are in the Northern Cape, 16 in the Free State, 11 in North West, 11 in the Eastern Cape, 10 in Mpumalanga, eight in Gauteng, eight in KZN, six in Limpopo and five in the Western Cape.

Back in July, the municipalities with the biggest debt (per province) were:

• Maluti-a-Phofung (Free State): R6 739 454 596
• Emalahleni (Mpumalanga): R6 431 970 123
• Emfuleni (Gauteng): R4 561 505 380
• Matlosana (North West): R951 858 304
• Enoch Mgijima (Eastern Cape): R778 561 822
• Modimolle-Mookgophong (Limpopo): R746 282 577
• Kai !Garib (Northern Cape): R525 715 087
• Mpofana (KZN): R315 591 147
• Matzikama (Western Cape): R97 019 771.

Eskom, however, denies that load-reduction is connected to municipal debt.

“The network equipment is designed to handle the demand that has been calculated based on forecasted customer base demand for a specific area. Any demand above the installed capacity will overload the equipment and result in repeated failures that often cause damage to the distributor network, infrastructure and property.

“To prevent catastrophic failure of equipment that may cause a safety risk to the community and lead to extended outage times, Eskom Distribution implements load-reduction during peak load demand periods.”

Despite Eskom saying that load-reduction is not implemented during load-shedding and that it will always pre-announce load-reduction, on December 7 Mbombela experienced four additional hours of power cuts – on top of stage 6 load-shedding. This meant that the city experienced 12 hours of power cuts in 24 hours (the longest lasting six hours) – and no warning of the extended outage was given by Eskom. Affected areas in Mbombela have never been subjected to load-reduction.

The metro said at the time that Mbombela was among 40 municipalities affected by an increased load-reduction programme. It stressed that the additional cuts were unrelated to its Eskom debt, reported to be R1.2b.

Pending legal action

Business organisation Sakeliga says it is ready to file papers in the High Court in Pretoria over load-reduction to establish a constitutional principle that Eskom cannot discriminate against different end-users and punish them if a state entity is not able to get its affairs in order.

“Eskom is trying to follow the path of least resistance by subjecting paying end-users to electricity interruptions under the guise of load-reduction, rather than actually eliminating illegal connections to supply lines.”

The organisation’s Tian Albert told Caxton Local Media it is yet to receive a response to a letter it sent to Eskom in August, demanding that ‘illegal’ load-reduction be stopped. Sakeliga is working with Agri North West and agricultural union TLU SA in the interests of affected members of the three organisations.

“Eskom has made empty promises that audits will be done on certain supply lines to remove illegal connections. Hundreds of businesses are suffering huge losses each month as a result of load-reduction. There is broad grassroots support for litigation against Eskom over the matter.”