While coal still makes up the bulk of South Africa’s electricity supply, the contribution of renewables to the country’s energy mix has slightly increased.
This is according to the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), which has released its annual statistics on power generation in SA for 2022, including load-shedding and energy availability factor (EAF) data.
The think-tank’s report comes as SA continues to battle acute energy shortages, with embattled power utility Eskom continuously implementing load-shedding over the years.
Eskom, which supplies approximately 90% of the country’s electricity largely from ageing coal-powered plants, announced stage six load-shedding will be implemented continuously this week until further notice, as a result of the breakdown of eight generation units on Sunday afternoon.
It subsequently increased load-shedding to stage seven on Tuesday and Wednesday evening.
Amid the power crisis, businesses and households alike have been exploring alternative energy solutions, such as renewables, to mitigate against the load-shedding woes.
The CSIR’s statistics include all utility-scale generation technologies. Technologies include coal, nuclear, hydro, solar photovoltaics (PV), onshore wind, concentrated solar power (CSP), pumped storage and diesel-fuelled open cycle gas turbines.
According to the CSIR, in 2022, the total system demand was similar to 2021, but still 5.2TWh (2.2%) less than the pre-lockdown levels of 2019.
It notes coal still dominates the South African energy mix, providing 80% of the total system load.
The contribution of renewable energy technologies (wind, solar PV and CSP) increased in 2022 to a total of 6.2GW installed capacity and provided 7.3% of the total energy mix.
It points out it was the first year that solar (PV and CSP) generation output decreased.
In the previous period, the council said the contribution of renewable energy technologies increased in 2021 to a total of 5.7GW installed capacity and provided 6.6% of the total energy mix.
“The Eskom fleet EAF continued its declining trend in 2022, with an average EAF of 58.1%, compared to the EAF of 61.7% for 2021 and 65% for 2020,” says the CSIR in a statement.
“This is largely due to the increase of unplanned outages (detailed by the unplanned capacity loss factor) experienced by Eskom,” it explains.
“The year 2022 overtook 2021 as the most intensive load-shedding year yet, concentrated in the latter half of the year, which comprised over 80% of the annual total. December 2022, the highest load-shedding month ever, on its own was more load-shedding than in any previous year.”
According to the CSIR, this is the first year the majority of load-shedding has not been stage two, having been overtaken by stage four.
“Stage six load-shedding has far surpassed that experienced in 2019, the only other year with stage six,” it adds.
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