According to the Information Received From Eskom
Loadshedding is used as a last resort when there is inadequate capacity available to supply the demand. This is to protect the system from a total blackout which will be costly to the country.
The main reasons for the inability to meet demand are a national capacity shortage of between 4 000 and 6 000 MW and the availability of Eskom’s Generation fleet, which is below aspiration.
In order to address the availability of the Generation fleet, Eskom is focusing on operational recovery and capacity increase which include:
The root causes of the current performance were due to late decision to allow Eskom to build new capacity and many years of sub-prudent and efficient cost-reflective tariffs which led to over a decade of “running the stations very hard” with less-than-ideal reliability maintenance and mid-life refurbishments. Until both the inadequate capacity and availability of the Generation fleet are addressed, the risk of loadshedding will remain high.