Johannesburg - Unplanned outages eased to 3 395 Megawatts (MW) on November 29 from 5 056MW on November 26 after Koeberg unit 2 was synchronised to the national grid in the early hours of November 26‚ after completing its planned refuelling‚ maintenance and inspection outage on schedule. The unit was taken offline on September 7‚ Eskom said in its 93rd system status bulletin.
Eskom’s internal benchmark is to have no more than 3 600MW in unplanned maintenance‚ a benchmark it has so far missed more than 60% of the time so far this year. The last time it achieved this benchmark or below was on August 14 prior to November 29.
Planned maintenance rose to 3‚616MW on November 29 from 3 496MW on November 26. Available capacity was only 32 902MW compared with peak demand of 31 950MW on November 28 resulting in a margin of 2.9%. On November 8 available capacity was only 33 500MW while demand was 32 551MW for a margin of only 2.8%.
The international norm is to have a margin of 15%.
Peak demand is forecast at 31 511MW on Monday‚ 31 450MW on Tuesday and 31 329MW on Wednesday. - I-Net Bridge