South African businesses and consumers must brace for long weeks of load shedding ahead until at least March 2024, a new report by the Centre for Risk Analysis (CRA) has highlighted.
Since the beginning of 2023, there has been only a single 24-hour period free of rolling blackouts in South Africa.
Eskom’s latest energy outlook, which is included in its weekly system status report, suggests that this is likely to continue, with the state electricity company being unable to meet demand for electricity during any week through to at least March 2024.
The ‘Likely Risk Scenario’ for every single week from now until 25 March next year has been marked as level ‘Red’, indicating an electricity shortfall greater than 2 000 megawatts.
According to a CRA analysis of data contained in the report, South Africans should expect to spend 43 weeks of the year ahead, or 83% of the year, in Stage 4 or Stage 5 load-shedding.
The energy utility’s projection assumes that unplanned outages will average 16 500 MW each week over the course of the year.
The South African economy contracted by 1.3% in Q4 2022.
“Banks, government agencies and international organisations have cut their growth forecasts for 2023 in recent weeks, to between 0.1% and 0.3%, while raising the alarm over the severe impact of South Africa’s energy constraints on jobs and growth,” the CRA report noted.
“Along with the rising cost of living and higher political tensions ahead of the 2024 general election, we flag the risk of social unrest during the winter months ahead.”
Minister of Electricity, Kgosientso Ramakgopa, last week warned of higher stages of load-shedding during the winter and noted that currently, just over half (53%) of Eskom’s total installed capacity is available at any given time.
The ongoing decline in this metric — the ‘Energy Availability Factor’ — over more than a decade, has been the key factor driving the need for the rolling blackouts.
Last week, Nedbank’s chief economist, Nicky Weimar, and independent political and trend analyst, JP Landman, said they believed the threat of a grid collapse had risen.
“With little over a year to go before the 2024 general election, the growing sense of urgency within the government to address the energy crisis is becoming palpable
“However, whether the measures taken to date have been effective is debatable,” the CRA said.
The government declared a national state of disaster in response to the electricity crisis on 9 February, but cancelled it last week, with nothing to show for it.
Finance Minister, Enoch Godongwana on 30 March exempted Eskom from having to disclose irregular, fruitless, and wasteful expenditure in its annual financial statements for a period of three years.
That exemption was withdrawn last week after a public outcry, although he hinted that it could be reinstated.
