Transmission Ten-Year Development Plan 2011-2020 - Eskom

1. Introduction
1.1 CONTEXT OF THE TRANSMISSION TEN-
YEAR PLAN
Eskom Holdings is the biggest producer of electricity
in South Africa; it also transmits electricity via a
transmission network which supplies electricity at high
voltages to a number of key customers and distributors.
Eskom is a vertically integrated company licensed
to generate, transmit and distribute electricity. The
transmission licence is held by Eskom Transmission, the
transmission network service provider, (TNSP). Planning
the transmission network is the responsibility of the
Grid Planning Department, in the System Operations
and Planning Division.
The TNSP is required to abide by the regulatory
requirements to annually publish a document detailing
the plans of how the transmission network will develop
in the next five years. The requirements further stipulate
that the published document should include:
• the acquisition of servitudes for strategic purposes;
• a list of planned investments, including costs;
• diagrams displaying the planned changes to the
transmission system (TS);
• an indication of the impact on customers in terms
of service quality and cost; and
• any other information as specified by the NERSA
from time to time.
A further requirement is that the TNSP holds public
forums to share such plans with stakeholders in order
to facilitate a joint planning process with them. The
second ten-year plan was published in 2010, this is the
third publication based on the TDP for 2011 to 2020
(also called the 2010 TDP internally to Eskom) which
was finalised internally during the latter parts of 2010.
1.2 STRUCTURE OF THE DOCUMENT
The document is structured in the following manner:
Chapter 2 deals with the electricity demand forecast
and generation assumptions. The demand forecast
determines how the network is planned and it
contextualises the planning activity while the generation
assumptions outlines the generation build that informs
some of the planned transmission network, as significant
transmission network is required to evacuate power
from the power stations to the load.
Chapter 3 focuses on the major changes that have
occurred since the completion of the previous published
Ten-year plan. The changes that occurred include the
enhancement of geospatial forecasting, which improves
the forecasting of load at a spatial level, and the changes
from the previous generation assumptions to the ones
informing this plan.
Chapter 4 focuses on projects that have been
completed in the past year and the impact they have
had on network reliability. This is partly to demonstrate
the value of the projects as they are completed and to
also inform stakeholders about the progress of projects
thus far.
© Eskom 2011 1