{"id":628218,"date":"2022-09-26T08:57:19","date_gmt":"2022-09-26T06:57:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=628218"},"modified":"2022-09-26T08:57:19","modified_gmt":"2022-09-26T06:57:19","slug":"eskoms-worst-week-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/energy\/628218\/eskoms-worst-week-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"Eskom&#8217;s worst week ever"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As South Africa faces yet another week of load shedding, the country&#8217;s energy crisis continues unabated with Eskom continuing to reach new lows.<\/p>\n<p>Eskom announced on Sunday (25 September) that load shedding will continue this week at stage 3 during the day (00h00 to 16h00) &#8211; escalating to stage 4 during the evening (16h00 to 00h00).<\/p>\n<p>This is expected to <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/energy\/628150\/stage-3-and-4-load-shedding-this-week-here-is-the-schedule\/\">continue until at least Thursday<\/a>, with further updates coming during the week.<\/p>\n<p>According to the Bureau for Economic Research (BER), this is coming on the tail end of the worst week of load shedding in Eskom&#8217;s history.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The week before last was already the worst on record for the Energy Availability Factor (EAF). This is likely to have worsened further last week,&#8221; the BER said.<\/p>\n<p>EAF for the week ending 16 September saw availability as low as 53.16%. Last week started with stage 6 load shedding, which was only lowered to stage 4 by the weekend, the BER said.<\/p>\n<p>Energy availability for 2022 is estimated to be 51%.<\/p>\n<p><a  data-lightbox=\"post-image\" href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Energy-availablitly-September-2022.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-628220\" src=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Energy-availablitly-September-2022.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"693\" height=\"424\" srcset=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Energy-availablitly-September-2022.png 989w, https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Energy-availablitly-September-2022-300x184.png 300w, https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Energy-availablitly-September-2022-768x470.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 693px) 100vw, 693px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Load shedding tracking app, EskomSePush,<a href=\"https:\/\/dailyinvestor.com\/south-africa\/2892\/eskom-disaster-explained-in-four-graphs\/\"> revealed that South Africa had experienced 1,637 hours of national load-shedding over 68 days so far in 2022<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It was significantly higher than the 1,153 hours over 48 days in 2021 and the 844 hours over 35 days in 2020.<\/p>\n<p>The last year has also seen higher load-shedding stages for longer, which is particularly damaging to businesses.<\/p>\n<p>Over the last five years, there has been a clear trend of increasing load shedding caused by breakdowns at power plants.<\/p>\n<p>Updates from Eskom show how bad the situation has become. Of about 50,000MW of installed capacity on Sunday, only 26,360MW was available (53%). Meanwhile, demand was closer to 27,000MW.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Evening Peak Feedback 25\/09\/2022, 18:32<br \/>\nTotal demand: 26 881MW<br \/>\nLoadshedding: 2 624MW<br \/>\nEskom OCGT&#8217;s Utilised: 9<br \/>\nIPP OCGT&#8217;s Utilised: 2<br \/>\nRenewable Gen: 1 880MW (Wind 1 793MW, CSP 87MW)<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Eskom_SA?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@Eskom_SA<\/a> Available Generation Capacity: 26 357MW<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/EskomSpokesper1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@EskomSpokesper1<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 SikonathiMantshantsh (@SikonathiM) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SikonathiM\/status\/1574101175783526400?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 25, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><strong>Impact<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The BER noted that the near-constant load shedding is likely to wreak havoc on the economy and could push the country into a technical recession.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;While Stats SA will only release the high-frequency activity data for September in the first half of November, the extent of the current load-shedding would not only have weighed directly on electricity generation &#8211; which forms part of the GDP calculation &#8211; but also on sectors such as mining, manufacturing and agriculture that are heavy users of electricity,&#8221; it said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In all, this detracts from the expected recovery in quarterly GDP during 2022Q3 after the 0.7% contraction in Q2.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Load shedding is also putting pressure on other major economic indicators, including interest rates, and the rand, the BER said.<\/p>\n<p>While both of these indicators are overwhelmingly being pushed weaker by international moves &#8211; like the US Fed&#8217;s aggressive hiking strategy and the stronger dollar &#8211; both come under pressure from short-term economic losses and GDP growth concerns.<\/p>\n<p>Sustained stage 5 load shedding is a factor, the BER said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The sustained weaker rand is one of the more important risks,&#8221; it said. &#8220;Despite the 75bps SARB policy rate hike and the fact that two monetary policy committee (MPC) members preferred a 100bps move, the local currency lost further ground last week.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;While sustained stage 5 load-shedding may provide part of the explanation, this is rather a strong dollar story as the US central bank (Fed) signalled last week that further aggressive policy rate hikes are likely in the rest of the year.&#8221;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/energy\/628150\/stage-3-and-4-load-shedding-this-week-here-is-the-schedule\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Stage 3 and 4 load shedding this week \u2013 here is the schedule<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As South Africa faces yet another week of load shedding, the country&#8217;s energy crisis continues unabated with Eskom continuing to reach new lows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":481315,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9874],"tags":[14829,1164,26],"class_list":["post-628218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-ber","tag-eskom","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628218"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":628242,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628218\/revisions\/628242"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/481315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}