Unplanned outages eased to 4‚473 Megawatts (MW) on November 5 from 5‚026MW on November 1‚ Eskom said in its 86th system status bulletin.
Planned maintenance jumped to 5‚076MW on November 5 from 3‚956MW on November 1‚ 4‚252MW on October 29 and 4‚014MW on October 25.
Available capacity was only 32‚556MW compared with peak demand of 31‚533MW on November 5 resulting in a margin of only 3.1%. The international norm is to have a margin of 15%.
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.
Peak demand is forecast at 31‚485MW on Monday‚ 31‚436MW on Tuesday and 31‚401MW on Wednesday. - I-Net Bridge