South Africa’s Eskom imposes blackouts, called load shedding, when supply does not meet demand
Johannesburg:
From dairy farms unable to keep milk refrigerated to chickens suffocating en masse due to fan failures and morticians fighting to preserve bodies, South Africa is suffering its worst energy crisis in years.
Africa’s most industrialized nation has been hit by crippling blackouts, prompting thousands of consumers to take to the streets in protest this week.
Here’s what you need to know about the crisis:
eight levels of misery
State-owned utility Eskom imposes blackouts, called load shedding, when supply does not meet demand.
There are eight levels of these scheduled outages, with outages ranging from two and a half hours to a little over 12 hours total in a day.
Blackouts this month have oscillated between stages three and six.
The last two stages have never been implemented, but there have been a record number of stage six days in recent months.
At those times, the power goes out for half a day, and only those with generators, solar panels, or wind turbines can get relief.
The growing anger has led to several protests in recent days and lawsuits against the authorities.
Blackouts cost hundreds of millions of dollars in lost production every day, according to opposition estimates.
How did South Africa get here?
The crisis that besets Eskom has several causes.
The end of apartheid in 1994 was followed by a push to connect areas where the black majority previously had no electricity.
This, along with economic growth and the increase in the population, from less than 45 million to 60 million, has fueled demand.
In 2007, the year the power cuts were first implemented, Eskom began building two new coal-fired stations to try to keep up.
But older plants are plagued with breakdowns and need constant maintenance.
And the new plants themselves have suffered from start-up delays, design and construction problems, massive cost overruns and allegations of corruption.
Eskom also blames its problems on sabotage, the theft of coal and spare parts by organized gangs, prompting the deployment of the military to protect power plants.
The ailing monopoly has racked up debts of 400 billion rand ($23 billion), equivalent to nearly a quarter of South Africa’s annual GDP.
Last year, it said it had run out of money to buy diesel, which it burns to make up production shortfalls caused by breakdowns.
South Africa uses coal, which it has in abundance, to generate about 80 percent of its electricity.
It is estimated that you need 1.5 trillion rand to stop using fossil fuels. Last year it secured hundreds of millions of dollars in international funding to help transition to cleaner sources.
There is a solution?
The government, which the opposition blames for the crisis, presented a plan last July.
This includes improving maintenance, importing electricity from neighboring countries and accelerating the deployment of renewable energy, a process long held back by the protection of the coal industry, which employs almost 100,000 people.
A license threshold for private power generation projects has been removed and a pricing structure will soon be completed to allow private companies to sell electricity generated by rooftop solar panels, Chairman Cyril Ramaphosa said this week.
The president has warned that the crisis cannot be resolved overnight, although some of his cabinet ministers have boasted that it could be over in six to 18 months.
Bertha Dlamini, director of African Women in Energy and Power, a nonprofit organization, warned that renewables were gaining steam but “not fast enough to protect the country” from blackouts.
“Cargo shedding will be with us for several years, it may get better, but it’s less likely to go away completely over the next three years,” he said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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