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Eskom overspent on diesel for its open-cycle gas turbines (OCGTs) in the 2023/24 financial year, saying it “marginally exceeded” its budget.
The power utility runs its OCGTs to supplement power production to help it meet peak electricity demand in the evenings and fend off higher stages of load-shedding.
Using diesel to power these OCGTs is one of Eskom’s biggest cost items and a significant contributor to its annual electricity tariff hikes.
In May 2023, electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said Eskom’s diesel budget would run out before the financial year ends on 31 March 2024.
With the end of the financial year approaching, MyBroadband asked Eskom how much of its diesel budget it has remaining.
“Eskom has marginally exceeded its OCGTs budget with the additional requirements funded via other savings in the business,” it said.
“Eskom manages its OCGTs in terms of system requirements and affordability.”
The power utility burns diesel at the Ankerlig and Gourikwa power stations, which have a combined capacity of over 2,000MW.
Eskom’s Ankerlig diesel-powered plantIt also buys power from two Independent Power Producer (IPP) owned OCGT power plants, which produce just over 1,000MW.
According to its budget for the financial year, Eskom had R19.5 billion assigned for diesel for its own OCGT plants and R8.4 billion to buy power from IPP-owned OCGT plants.
Eskom hasn’t revealed how much it overspent on OCGT power generation and procurement. However, having exceeded the total budget of R27.9 billion, it has spent approximately R2.33 billion per month on average.
The March 2024 wholesale price of R21.70 per litre works out to approximately more than 107 million litres of diesel per month or 3.5 million litres a day.
To put this into perspective, this is enough to fill more than 1.3 million Toyota Fortuners a month, which have 80-litre tanks, or 44,150 per day.
Eskom’s coal-burning fleet’s electricity availability factor (EAF) dropped to 50.84% last month — a new low for February.
This could result in the power utility burning more diesel in OCGTs in the coming months to compensate for the underperformance of its coal-powered fleet.
The EAF is a critical performance measure for the power utility’s generation fleet and reflects the proportion of capacity available for providing electricity to South Africa.
Chris Yelland, managing director at EE Business IntelligenceThe declining EAF means Eskom has less capacity to serve the country’s electricity needs, which it can try to make up by burning more diesel in its OCGTs.
Energy expert Chris Yelland noted that the EAF figure of 50.84% in February 2024 is lower than the “very low figures” for the same time in 2023, despite the return of three 800MW coal-fired units at Kusile power station in November.
Yelland previously told MyBroadband that he doesn’t believe Eskom can sufficiently increase the EAF of its existing coal power fleet.
“They say we’re gonna improve Eskom’s EAF,” said Yelland. “You know, we’ve been waiting for years for this to happen. If it was so easy, do it.”
He explained that the EAF measure comes from 80 different generators across various power plants. Meaningfully increasing it would require Eskom to carry out an unrealistic amount of planned maintenance.
“If you want to improve the average EAF, you’ve got to work on all 80 generators,” said Yelland.
“You can’t do that in a short time, and you can’t do it simultaneously — you’d have to shut down the whole of South Africa.”
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