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The head of South Africa’s broken Eskom electricity monopoly has warned that the rolling blackouts plaguing the country could hit record levels in the coming cold months, unless the utility can prevent its decrepit fleet of power plants from being overwhelmed by breakdowns.
South Africans who are already enduring power cuts lasting up to 12 in every 32 hours were told by Calib Cassim, Eskom’s acting chief executive, that it was “going to be a difficult winter” where the outages could stretch to up to 16 hours.
“The winter outlook indicates an increased risk of supply shortfall against expected demand, with our worst-case scenario indicating that load-shedding could intensify to Stage 8, if our interventions are not successful,” Cassim said.
South Africa’s current “load-shedding” is classed as Stage 6 on a scale that uses the number of gigawatts of demand that are subject to rolling cuts. While Stage 8 is the maximum level of outage for which Eskom braced South Africans, the utility has been planning for the stages to eventually go up to 16.
Although Cassim stressed this was the worst-case scenario, households and businesses have learned not to get their hopes up as the years-long crisis at Eskom has intensified, throttling growth and threatening inflation as companies fall back on expensive diesel generators.
Outages so far this year have already surpassed 2022 records as looting under the ruling African National Congress, lack of repairs, and major coal and nuclear plant going offline have all brought Eskom to the brink.
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government has promised to review power station performance and to accelerate the procurement of energy supplies outside Eskom, but these measures have come too late for this winter.
The utility that is responsible for nearly all of South Africa’s power with a nominal capacity of about 45GW is aiming to keep breakdowns to below 15GW this winter in order to limit a shortfall in meeting expected peak demand of around 33GW. Just 3GW of further plant breakdowns could tip South Africa from Stage 6 into Stage 8, according to Eskom’s forecast.
The existing shortfall is so severe that “the amount of electricity distributed is at its lowest level since 2002, when the economy was a third smaller than it is today,” Jason Tuvey, deputy chief emerging markets economist for Capital Economics, said.
Potential price rises from businesses trying to pass through diesel generator costs have become a dilemma for the South African Reserve Bank, which many economists believe was coming to the end of a cycle of rate increases but could have to stick to them despite a weakening economy.
“All of this ultimately threatens a prolonged period of stagflation in South Africa,” Tuvey said.
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