2023-07-10 13:07:59
Power cuts are expected to end earlier than expected in South Africa. After weeks of daily interruptions, the general manager of the electricity company Eskom, Andre de Ruyter, announced during a press conference organized on Saturday July 8, 2023 that new electricity production units were going to be put in service.
Following him, the Minister of Electricity argued on Sunday July 9, 2023 that power cuts in South Africa could end sooner than expected thanks to better maintenance of power stations.
“When I took office, I said that we will solve the problem of load shedding, and I think we will do it much faster than expected,” said Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, during a press briefing in Pretoria.
After dropping to 48.6% in December 2022, the energy availability factor in the continent’s most industrialized country has just reached almost 70%, thanks to better maintenance of aging power plants.
“Improved generation capacity means there are now more opportunities to undertake planned maintenance of power stations,” added the minister who took office in early March 2023.
The intensity of load shedding decreased over the weeks, the network having succeeded in restarting certain defective production units.
South Africa’s main electricity company has faced an intensification of cuts due to a strike movement within the company. But the unions returned to work on July 5, 2023, after securing a 7% raise and housing assistance from Eskom.
By December 2022, the energy availability factor (EAF) had fallen to a historically low level of 48.6%, due to frequent outages at the power plants of the public electricity company Eskom. This However, the factor has gradually risen to nearly 70% currently, according to a press release published by the government on Thursday July 6, 2023.
Recall that South Africa has been in the grip of a serious energy crisis since 2008, due to the inability of Eskom to meet demand, with its aging coal-fired power stations and inadequate new production capacities. This crisis worsened in 2022, with scheduled load shedding that sometimes lasted up to 12 hours a day.
According to economists, each day of power cuts costs South Africa nearly $40 million.
For its part, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) lowered, in March 2023, its economic growth forecast for South Africa in 2023 to 0.1%, against a previous estimate of 1.2%, due in particular to of the worsening electricity crisis.
At the end of January 2023, the South African Central Bank had also revised its growth forecasts for 2023 downwards, bringing them down to 0.3%, against a previous estimate of 1.1% for the same reasons.
After years of mismanagement and corruption, Eskom’s power plant fleet is aging and has been failing regularly for more than 10 years. South Africa fails to produce enough energy for the country and relies heavily on coal mining to provide electricity, with 80% of its production coming from coal-fired power plants. In April, the company warned to be prepared for up to 101 days of power outages.
Put simply, these power cuts have reduced the potential size of South Africa’s economy by around 20% since Eskom started rolling load shedding in 2008 to stave off a grid collapse, according to estimates published in March 2023 by the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), the country’s largest fund manager.
Moctar STAYED / VivAfrik
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