Demand for electricity in South Africa continued to trend down in 2024, a new Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) report confirms.

It shows that peak demand was a per cent lower year-on-year at 33.5 GW (33.9 GW), while energy demand was three per cent lower at 219.6 TWh (225.9 TWh).

The fall is attributed to the rapid growth of private sector embedded generation, much of which had arisen in the form of solar PV installations by businesses and households.

Eskom estimated that there was more than 6 GW of privately owned solar PV installed by September last year, with installations having surged during the country’s loadshedding crisis, which peaked in 2023.

The CSIR’s ‘Utility-scale power generation statistics in South Africa’ report does not currently track output from embedded generators, but CSIR Energy Centre head Dr Thabo Hlalele says the development is reflected in the fall in the residual load.

The report also highlights the simultaneous steep rise in electricity tariffs, however, which had increased by 190% in the ten-year period since 2014.

“The national average price of electricity increased annually by an average of about 11% over the last ten years compared to the annual average inflation rate of about 5%.”

Once the 12.74% hike approved for 2025/26 is implemented on April 1, the average tariff will be 195.93c/kWh, compared with 117.50c/kWh recorded ten years ago when measured in 2024 rand terms.

“[This] is much higher than the cost of the latest variable generation resources which range between 50c/kWh and 60c/kWh for solar PV and wind,” the report notes.

The steep rise is even more pronounced when compared with the 49.70c/kWh of 2000, again in 2024 rand terms.

SHARP FALL IN LOADSHEDDING

The decline in demand, together with improvements in Eskom’s fleet performance, led to a sharp decrease in loadshedding last year to 1 656 hours, from 6 948 hours in 2023.

Implemented across 69 days, compared with 290 days in the prior year, a total of 4 126 GWh of energy was shed, again representing a sharp fall from the 24 869 GWh shed in 2024 and the 11 529 GWh shed in 2022.

CSIR estimates the cost of loadshedding in 2024 at R481-billion as compared with R2.9-trillion in 2024.

Hlalele reports that the Eskom fleet’s energy availability factor (EAF) achieved an average of 60% last year, compared with 55% in the prior year, as a result of reduced unplanned outages.

This, in turn, led to a 48% reduction in the amount of electricity produced from the expensive diesel-fuelled open-cycle gas turbines (OCGTs), which together generated 1.9 TWh last year compared with 3.6 TWh in 2023.

The capacity factor of the OCGT power stations fell to 6.2% last year, having risen to 12% in 2023.

The capacity factor of the coal fleet was 50% (47.4%), but nuclear slumped to only 47.7% (49.9%), reflecting prolonged outages of the Koeberg units during the year.