Even as he sought to reassure South Africans that Eskom could still provide electricity and the country would avoid a total blackout, public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan raised the possibility of blackouts reaching an unprecedented stage 8, which might lead to outages of up to 13 hours.
Speaking in parliament, Gordhan sought to fend off suggestions by the DA that the utility be declared a “state of disaster”, which would allow provinces and municipalities to seek alternative sources of power.
He said implementing stage 8 load-shedding could be considered as a way to avoid a total collapse of the grid.
In December 2019, Eskom’s implementation of stage 6 load-shedding led to an outcry and prompted a “surprised and shocked” President Cyril Ramaphosa to cut short a trip to Egypt and return home to meet Eskom executives.
That was accompanied by a decline in the rand because it fuelled concern, which turned out to be justified, that the economy would slip into a recession.
Gordhan’s comments on Wednesday came as Eskom said half of its installed coal-fired generation capacity of about 38,000MW was offline due to maintenance and unplanned breakdowns, while more generation units are at “high risk” of failure as the country enters a week of load-shedding.
The return of power cuts highlighted one of the biggest risks for an economy that has still to reach levels seen before the Covid-19 outbreak in 2020.
Eskom’s load-shedding schedule at present provides for up to stage 8, or 8,000MW of cuts, which would entail about 13 hours of staggered blackouts a day. However, at a media briefing in March, Eskom executives said that further levels to remove as much as 10,000MW from the system could be implemented if required to prevent a total collapse of the system.
The DA has been calling for a declaration of a state of disaster, arguing that doing so will allow provinces and municipalities that have the resources and capacity to generate electricity from private players to do so more expeditiously.
In response, Gordhan said the main goal of load-shedding is to avoid a total collapse of the system. “There should therefore be a distinction made between a state of disaster just for dramatic effect as compared to a power system emergency which falls within the purview of the systems operator,” he said.
“At all times the imperative [of the system emergency] is to avoid the total collapse of the grid ... there are internal plans to manage the power system which will allow the systems operator to implement up to stage 8 load-shedding in order to protect the grid from total collapse ... at this stage there is absolutely no requirement for Eskom or government to declare such an emergency [state of disaster],” Gordhan said.
By Eskom’s own calculations each day of stage 4 load-shedding costs the economy about R1bn, while one day of stage 2 load-shedding results in economic losses of about R470m.
“Electricity supply limitations remain one of the primary domestic challenges, weighing on economic growth potential,” said Lara Hodes, an economist at Investec.
The power utility experienced 4,000MW of outages due to planned maintenance and 14,800MW of unplanned breakdowns on Wednesday, amounting to half of Eskom’s installed coal-fired generation capacity.
In addition to unplanned outages, units with combined generation capacity of 4,500MW, equal to the capacity of one of Eskom’s four largest coal-fired power stations, are at high risk of breaking down, said Rhulani Mathebula, Eskom’s acting MD for breakdowns.
Eskom COO Jan Oberholzer confirmed that the risk of load-shedding will remain high. “We have an old system that has been running in the red, [with] utilisation much higher than it should be. Unfortunately, we do not have the luxury to run maintenance as we should,” he said.
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