Cape Town - Calls for mass mobilisation have again been made as South Africa’s national energy grid teeters.
This as energy experts warn of possible Stage 8 load shedding.
The International Monetary Fund last week predicted South Africa’s economy would barely grow this year with a big contributor being rolling blackouts and political uncertainty.
Daniel Silke, director of Political Futures Consulting, and Professor André Duvenhage, political analyst at North West University, agree there is no doubt there is growing frustration and anger among people about the electricity situation, and that this reaction is specifically placed before President Cyril Ramaphosa and his government.
Duvenhage said: “If this process continues, especially in the polls up to the 2024 elections, then we may see higher levels of mobilisation, strikes and processes to create or recreate a national shutdown – which form part of the strategy of groupings like the EFF, and other groups, even within the ANC.”
Silke said: “There is a deep depression among many South Africans, it is certainly felt within the business and private sector environment in particular. Those who are involved in the productive capacity in our economy are particularly hard hit; they are unlikely to domestically invest to any great degree until there is a degree of improvement in the power grid.”
In the face of no clear plan to end load shedding and a very limited amount of new generation currently being added to the grid, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research senior energy researcher Monique le Roux said it was imperative that pressure be placed on the government to take urgent action.
Eskom on Sunday warned Stage 6 would continue until further notice due to a shortage of generation capacity; breakdowns were at 17481MW of generating capacity while the generating capacity out of service for planned maintenance was at 5657MW.
Interim Eskom spokesperson Daphne Mokwena said Koeberg Unit 2 was expected to be returned to service before morning peak today, after tripping over the weekend and causing continuous Stage 6.
This had removed 920MW of generating capacity, equivalent to one stage of load shedding. Unit 1 remains off-line for Koeberg’s 20-year life extension project and with both units off-line, there was no power coming from the country’s only nuclear power station.
Presidency spokesperson Vincent Magwenya said: “Work is under way to reduce the severity of load shedding and to ultimately end it completely. However, the spectre of the unreliability of Eskom plants still looms large.”
Magwenya said all the issues related to Eskom’s inability to provide reliable power supply were being attended to as speedily as possible and that the president had transparently indicated that solutions would take time.
“There’s a greater degree of co-operation and collaboration across sectors and among social partners to resolve the country’s energy crisis. This is a crisis as the president has stated numerous times that we will overcome as a country,” Magwenya said.
Energy expert Lungile Mashele said: “Stage 8 happened last week, however this was not the first time this year. We had over 7000 MW in reduced demand. This was a mix of manual load reduction, interruptible load shedding and virtual power station.”
This was reported by the Sunday Times yesterday, however Eskom denied this as it used a combination of load curtailment stage 4 and load shedding stage 6 – thus Stage 8 of up to 12 hours of load shedding had not been reached.
Joshua Budlender, South African Economics PhD candidate at the University of Massachusetts, said: “Eskom has implemented ‘load curtailment’ intermittently since at least the first post-94 power crisis of 2007. This is when they cut or reduce power to their directly-supplied industrial consumers, not households.
“Sometimes this happens alongside load shedding, sometimes separately… False claims of Stage 8 actually underplay how serious the crisis is. Stage 8 is very likely coming, and it’s unlike anything we’ve seen so far.”
On Saturday night, Eskom shed 5741 MW and made use of 19 of its 20 diesel OCGT, a considerable amount to maintain Stage 6 alone.
Le Roux said this indicated how close the country was to Stage 7 or Stage 8 load shedding.
“Should Eskom experience any interruption to the supply of diesel it would mean higher stages of load shedding. We also know that burning that amount of diesel over an extended period comes at a significant cost to Eskom which could mean that the availability of budget to procure additional diesel during the rest of their financial year could be at risk,” Le Roux said.
Le Roux said, “Citizens are understandably growing frustrated with the current situation and there is no indication at the moment that load shedding will get any better in the medium or long term and many worrying signs that load shedding will get worse in future. There is no clear plan that has been brought forward whereby load shedding will be ended.”
CPUT media studies lecturer and analyst Trust Matsilele added that there has been a general neglect when it comes to addressing structural and infrastructure issues tracing back to the Mbeki administration so what the incumbent president is facing is a culmination of that neglect over the years.
kristin.engel@inl.co.za