Load shedding and its impact of the metals and engineering sector

Eskom acknowledges your letter dated 23 November 2021.

The contribution of the Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of South Africa (SEIFSA) to the
employment and economy of the country is acknowledged. Eskom has had a good relationship
spanning over many years with the key industrial customers represented by your federation, and
such industries have always complied with the NRS 048-9 agreement to curtail load whenever
Eskom declared a power system emergency.

While Eskom regrets the electricity supply interruptions in the past weeks, it is important for SEIFSA
to understand that load shedding is the last resort in the management of the power system. This is
to protect and prevent the power system from collapsing or even having a black-out.
Eskom forecasts potential load shedding based on the maintenance plan and an assumed amount
of unplanned unavailable generation capacity; 11 000 MW in the winter and 12 000 MW in the
summer months (the base case). Eskom then adds two risk scenarios by adding an additional
1 000 MW and 2 000 MW to this assumption.

For the base case, the current forecast is two days of Stage 2 load shedding for the next year. For
the + 1 000 MW risk case, this rises to 104 days of up to Stage 2 load shedding and for the + 2 000
MW risk case; 252 days of up to Stage 3 load shedding. Eskom, however, endeavours to keep the
unplanned losses to below even the base case. It is essential that, for sustainable performance
improvement, Eskom continues to implement its reliability maintenance programme and to keep in
mind that 4 000 MW to 6 000 MW additional national capacity is required to significantly reduce the
risk of load shedding.

I welcome SEIFSA’s availability to assist Eskom in any way possible, and would therefore like to
propose that together with some of my executive team, we have a meeting with you and your team
to discuss ways to reduce the impact of load shedding on your federation member companies.

My office will be in contact with yours to make this arrangement.

Yours sincerely

André de Ruyter
GROUP CHIEF EXECUTIVE