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Eskom continues to export power

Cape Town – Eskom has cited its bilateral electricity trade agreement with other Southern African Power Pool (SAPP) member states, and says it continues to export and import electricity.

Eskom told Fin24 that in an effort to reduce the impact of exports it has ensured that the contracts with SAPP trading partners are sufficiently flexible to allow for certain controls.

“During emergency situations in South Africa, non-firm agreements and industrial customers across the border are interrupted in line with the terms of their agreements,” Eskom said in a statement.

Eskom also urges other members to reduce consumption: “During load shedding in South Africa they are required to undertake proportional load shedding”.

The SAPP was founded in 1995 and has established a common power grid between Southern African countries so as to ensure integrated planning and the safe operation of the interconnected transmission system.

Load shedding policy

An energy insider said the guiding document for Eskom’s load shedding policy is being reviewed “to be more flexible, among other things”.

The NRS 048 – 9 refers to the “National Code of Practice: Emergency Load Reduction and System Restoration Practices” and a 2009 version the draft document can be found online.

The document was compiled by members of the SA Electricity Supply Industry including Nersa, government, and customer representation including the Energy Intensive User Group.

As one of its goals, it aims to carry out load shedding in an equitable manner. The insider, who chose to remain anonymous, said Eskom’s load shedding “is as equitable as it can be”.

In a response to questions about its load shedding modus operandi, Eskom said it is a process of rotating available supply between customers on an equitable basis when the system is constrained, thus matching supply with demand and avoiding a total blackout.

Read: Eskom mum on blackout plans

“During scheduled load shedding, parts of the network are switched off according to a predetermined schedule, with the impact spread equitably over the customer base,” Eskom said.

“If Eskom faces capacity problems, it reduces load among all of its customers, including the metros and municipalities. Therefore, Eskom asks the municipalities to reduce load, and they in turn activate load shedding among their customers.”

According to the source, it would make economic sense to only shed residential power rather than constraining industry, but added that such a move would cause a major ruckus.

Such a move would likely receive widespread support from industry after Bank of America Merrill Lynch estimated that three months of outages could shave as much as 1 percentage point off the South Africa’s economic growth rate.  

Eskom has agreements with certain large customers, whereby they reduce a significant percentage of their load when load shedding is scheduled. It also does not cut off the critical entities that directly contribute to the continuity of power supply, such as coal mines, oil refineries and water supply pumps.

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