SOUTH Africa is facing a risk of an unprecedented level of load shedding this week after units at two of its coal-fired power plants broke down.
Eskom earlier yesterday began cutting 6 000MW from the national grid, in what it calls Stage 6 power cuts, after generation units tripped at the Kusile and Kriel power stations. That’s sufficient energy to supply almost four million South African homes.
The nation is now at risk of breaching Stage 6, the utility’s CEO André de Ruyter said at a briefing yesterday when asked if the situation might worsen. Eskom started withdrawing 6 000MW from the grid in June.
That was the first time since 2019. The ongoing blackouts — the worst year on record — were a major contributor to the economy’s 0.7 percent contraction in the second quarter. Severe outages are a hazard to workers in deep-level mines and hurts manufacturing across Africa’s most-industrialised nation.
Eskom also poses a significant risk to public finances, with the government guaranteeing as much as R350 billion rand of its debt. Eskom is struggling to meet electricity demand because its old and poorly maintained power stations continually break down.
The nation has been subjected to rolling blackouts since 2008. Eskom has had to resort to outages for eight straight months this year. President Cyril Ramaphosa announced steps in July to encourage private power generation to supplement supply from renewable sources. Eskom plans to procure about 1 000MW of power on Monday from private power producers, De Ruyter said at the briefing. — News24