{"id":719596,"date":"2023-09-19T11:55:45","date_gmt":"2023-09-19T09:55:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=719596"},"modified":"2023-09-19T11:59:02","modified_gmt":"2023-09-19T09:59:02","slug":"double-trouble-south-africa-heading-for-a-new-load-shedding-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/energy\/719596\/double-trouble-south-africa-heading-for-a-new-load-shedding-record\/","title":{"rendered":"Double trouble – South Africa heading for a new load shedding record"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

South Africa is on track to hit a bleak new load shedding record: by mid-October, the country would have been without power for double the amount of time as in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is according to the latest projections in the Power Blackout Statistics report, compiled by independent energy analyst Pieter Jordaan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While South Africans typically measure load shedding in hours in effect – 5,615 hours this year so far, and counting – Jordaan’s data looks specifically at blackout hours, or the time the average South African spends without any power during load shedding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Jordaan, South Africans have already spent an accumulated 61.5 full days of blackouts in 2023 so far, equivalent to 1,476 hours of darkness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This already far exceeds the levels of blackouts experienced in the whole of 2022 by some margin (34.6 days, or around 830 hours). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Load shedding in 2023 hit 2022’s total back in May – but now the country is on track to double the 2022 record by mid-October<\/strong>, Jordaan said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The full-year outlook is that the country will see 86.1 full days of blackouts (2,066 hours), equivalent to spending about a quarter of the year in the dark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Commenting on the latest load shedding trends, Jordaan noted that the 7-day blackout trend has shown a moderation, reflecting the recent de-escalation of load shedding by Eskom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Load shedding on Sunday (16 September) was particularly notable as it afforded the country a full 18 hours of no load shedding at all – something South Africa had not seen since March 2023 when the country got a full-day suspension of outages on the public holiday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It took 180 days before South Africa could enjoy full power for 18 consecutive hours again,” Jordaan said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, despite the more recent easing of load shedding, the longer-term trends are not as positive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following a 91-day trend (or quarterly trend), load shedding has turned and is sharply rising following a decline since lower stages of load shedding in June. This is bringing it back in line with the 364-day trend (annual trend), which has been rising.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The annual trend reflects the implementation of permanent load shedding from September 2022, when the country has only experienced a handful of days where blackouts were not in effect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since September 2022, the average load shedding level has escalated by 2.7 stages to an average stage of 3.2 for the past 364 days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n

Read: Unhappy birthday to permanent load shedding in South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Africa experienced more blackouts in January 2023 than in all of 2021. By May, 2022’s blackouts were surpassed – now the next record looms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":685337,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9874],"tags":[26,17989],"class_list":["post-719596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-headline","tag-pieter-jordaan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719596","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=719596"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":719624,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719596\/revisions\/719624"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/685337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=719596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=719596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=719596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}