From undertakers to chicken farmers, the whole of South Africa is being hit hard by drastic power cuts, which have pushed several thousand people to take to the streets this week. Here’s what you need to know regarding the electricity crisis in Africa’s leading industrial power.
Legal action
The public company Eskom produces 90% of the country’s electricity. Unable to sufficiently supply African power, it has been imposing programmed outages for the past fifteen years, called in the country “loadshedding” or load shedding.
Depending on the size of the gap between supply and demand, the cuts oscillate between eight levels of frequency and duration, depriving South Africans of electricity from three to more than 13 hours a day. They are kept informed via a smartphone application.
Levels seven and eight, the most critical, have never yet been reached, but the country has experienced a record number of days at level six in recent months, resulting in more than 11 hours of blackouts. Those who can afford it equip their homes or businesses with diesel generators or solar panels.
Worsening power cuts have recently prompted part of the country to protest, with some going so far as to file a lawsuit once morest Eskom and the government.
According to the first opposition party (DA, Democratic Alliance), the electricity crisis is costing the economy hundreds of millions of dollars every day.
Regular breakdowns
Electricity demand has increased dramatically since the end of apartheid and the advent of democracy in 1994, with a drive to connect much of the country, including rural areas never before connected.
The economy has also grown and so has the population, which now stands at 60 million compared to less than 45 million at the time.
In 2007, Eskom launched the construction of two new coal-fired power plants. South Africa still draws 80% of its electricity from fossil fuels. The current fleet has an average age of 35 years with units plagued by regular breakdowns.
However, construction projects have accumulated delays and suffered from design problems, resulting in significant additional costs mixed with suspicions of corruption.
Eskom, which has accumulated a debt of 23 billion dollars, also regularly denounces sabotage as well as coal thefts, the government recently announcing the deployment of the army to protect the power stations.
Last year, Eskom said it might no longer afford diesel, a back-up solution to run emergency turbines.
A green solution?
South Africa is trying to phase out all-coal, and the government presented a plan last year for a “just transition”. Maintenance, import of electricity and deployment towards renewable energies are the main axes, following years of protectionism towards a coal industry weighing around 100,000 jobs.
Some ministers have argued that the electricity crisis might be resolved within 6 to 18 months.
But President Cyril Ramaphosa has repeated that the situation will not be resolved. “in one night”. And Eskom pointed out that solving the problems in the power plants “will take longer than South Africa wants and needs”.
Mr. Ramaphosa announced this week that the thresholds limiting the production of electricity by the private sector, in particular via solar, have been removed and that a tariff grid would be developed for marketing.
Progress towards clean energy is accelerating, according to Bertha Dlamini, head of the NGO African Women in Energy and Power, but “not fast enough to protect the country” from cuts. And “it is unlikely that load shedding will stop in the next three years”.
