{"id":87940,"date":"2024-06-27T08:04:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-27T08:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/?p=87940"},"modified":"2025-11-17T17:40:24","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T17:40:24","slug":"eskoms-reduced-reliance-on-costly-gas-turbines-signals-power-stability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/2024\/06\/27\/eskoms-reduced-reliance-on-costly-gas-turbines-signals-power-stability\/","title":{"rendered":"Eskom&#8217;s reduced use of costly gas turbines signals power stability"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>South Africa is edging closer to 100 days without loadshedding (<a href=\"https:\/\/loadshed.theoutlier.co.za\/\">93 days at the time of writing<\/a>). This is the longest loadshedding-free stretch since 2020. Eskom is also relying much less on diesel-powered gas turbines (OCGTs and GTs), an indicator of increased stability and output in the power-generation network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In April, May and June this year, Eskom generated 571 gigawatt hours (GWh) of power using gas turbines. In the same period in 2023, it generated 1,583GWh using diesel power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The use of OCGTs is intended as a strategic measure to supplement drops in power generation rather than as a long-term solution. Running OCGTs is also expensive. Eskom reported spending R3.1-billion in April 2023 to produce 470GWh of power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The cost of generating power using OCGTs is about five times more expensive than coal generation. <a href=\"https:\/\/meridianeconomics.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Resolving-Load-Shedding-Part-A-2021-analysis-01.pdf\">Some estimates<\/a> suggest OCGTs cost about R3\/kWh, while coal power costs about R0.42\/kWh. Other estimates put these higher but the difference remains roughly the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/loadshed.theoutlier.co.za\/\">The Outlier&#8217;s Loadshedding tracker<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,11,1387],"tags":[781,66,748,67,793,289,792,794,607],"newsletter-post":[],"site":[],"class_list":["post-87940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-loadshedding","category-the-outlier","tag-coal","tag-energy","tag-energy-crisis","tag-eskom","tag-gas-turbines","tag-loadshedding","tag-ocgt","tag-power","tag-renewables"],"acf":{"big_number":"","big_number_caption":"","big_number_link":"","big_number_background":"","big_number_text_colour":"#000000","big_number_icon":false,"big_number_wide":"yes","featured_chart":{"ID":87941,"id":87941,"title":"OCGT","filename":"OCGT.png","filesize":66550,"url":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/OCGT.png","link":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/2024\/06\/27\/eskoms-reduced-reliance-on-costly-gas-turbines-signals-power-stability\/ocgt\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"ocgt","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":87940,"date":"2024-06-27 08:03:29","modified":"2024-07-15 08:09:37","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/png","type":"image","subtype":"png","icon":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":1200,"height":1200,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/OCGT-150x150.png","thumbnail-width":150,"thumbnail-height":150,"medium":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/OCGT-300x300.png","medium-width":300,"medium-height":300,"medium_large":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/OCGT-768x768.png","medium_large-width":768,"medium_large-height":768,"large":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/OCGT-1024x1024.png","large-width":1024,"large-height":1024,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/OCGT-1536x1536.png","1536x1536-width":1536,"1536x1536-height":1536,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/OCGT.png","2048x2048-width":1200,"2048x2048-height":1200}},"flourish_chart_id":"","flourish_sub_title":"","flourish_chart_width":"medium","is_newsletter_post":"No","post_style":"ch","show_on_front":"Yes","link_through":"Yes","chart_url":"","background_colour":"#0089AA","text_colour":"#FFFFFF"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87940"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87949,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87940\/revisions\/87949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87940"},{"taxonomy":"newsletter-post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newsletter-post?post=87940"},{"taxonomy":"site","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/site?post=87940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}