Energy

Bleak load shedding forecast for South Africa

Staff Writer

 ·25 Apr 2022

South Africa’s record power outages last week will likely shock the country’s Q2 GDP growth, say economists at the Bureau for Economic Research (BER).

In a research note on Monday (25 April), the group noted that South Africa hit a new record of 22,000MW of generation capacity unavailable last week, with a ‘staggering’ 17,000MW of this being unplanned.

“Worryingly, in its assessment for the winter period, Eskom anticipates between 37 to 101 days of load-shedding, the latter in an extreme scenario. If it can limit unplanned breakdowns to below 12,500MW, it could avoid load-shedding,” the BER said.

While the exact economic impact of load shedding is hard to quantify, the Western Cape government estimates that load shedding costs South Africa’s economy R500 million per stage per day and the Western Cape’s economy R75 million per stage per day.

“Sudden and unexpected load shedding is extremely disruptive to all sectors of society, as nobody can plan or make contingency plans in such an unpredictable environment,” said Anton Bredell, Western Cape MEC of Local Government, Environmental Affairs and Development Planning.

Bredell said it is worrying that Eskom is struggling when the Western Cape is preparing for the winter months ahead. “As colder weather sets in over the next few months, we are once again asking people to stay safe when heating their homes with flammable heat sources other than electricity.”

#PowerAlert
24 April 2022
19:00

Our power system is under severe pressure. Please switch off all unnecessary lights, your geyser, pool pump, and non-essential appliances. pic.twitter.com/iq5xgBJyXK

— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) April 24, 2022

Eskom chief executive Andre de Ruyter said that the risk of a total power blackout across the country was low, despite the risk of more than 100 days of load shedding.

The power utility has warned the country could have more than 100 days of electricity blackouts this year because of outages. However, it has downplayed any fears of a total blackout across the country.

“We have this tool (load shedding) at our disposal. We have significant buffer capacity in the load shedding system before we approximate even close to a total system blackout. The load shedding system provides for a further reduction in load up to Stage 8. We still do have headroom in the system to allow us to avoid a total blackout.”

Read: Another electricity price hike to hit South Africa from July