South Africa suffers major power crisis, deficit to go up

South Africa is in the midst of a major power crisis with electricity supplier Eskom being forced to implemented intermittent ‘loadshedding’ since January as fear of blackout loom of the nation.

The current crisis wasn’t wholly unexpected as Eskom has been grappling with deep structural and maintenance problems in its current and ageing fleet of generators, which are on average 45 years of age this year, which is in the context of the typical 50 years design operating life of a power station.

Power sector structural flaws

There’s no end in sight for the crisis to end anytime soon with the power deficit, currently estimated at 4,000 – 6,000 MW of generation capacity might go up as performance of plants are likely to deteriorate further, Eskom has said.

“Eskom reiterates that the only way to end loadshedding is to add additional capacity. The shortfall is currently estimated at 4,000MW – 6,000MW of generation capacity. This supply deficit can only increase as the current fleet gets on in years and its performance continues to deteriorate,” the company said.

“While the current shortage in generation capacity prevails, it is important that all users of electricity use electricity sparingly, particularly during the evening peak hours. The National Energy Crisis Committee (NECOM) are working with Eskom to implement demand management measures, including incentives for loadshifting, feed-in tariffs, and other efficiency measures. While these are being implemented, South Africans are urged to conserve energy by switching off unnecessary lights, and being conscious of the cumulative impact of every Watt of electricity that can be saved,” Eskom said in an advisory to consumers.

The crisis started in October 2022 with the failure of the chimney system at its Kusile Power Station, which removed more than 2,000 MW of capacity.

“This, together with the planned extended outage of Unit 1 of the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station, are responsible for three stages of loadshedding. Eskom is making every effort to reduce the duration of these outages as much as possible.

The crisis, however, is unlikely to get resolved in the short term.

“We are working with urgency to resolve the generation capacity constraints and to reduce the loadshedding as soon as possible. The reality, however, is that resolving the problems impacting the performance of the