Page 8 - AfrElec Week 27 2022

AfrElec ESKOM AfrElec

ANC considers state of emergency

to deal with electricity crisis

SOUTH AFRICA SOUTH Africa’s electricity supply crisis con- shortages will persist over the next few weeks, so
tinues to deepen after the responsible utility, “load-shedding will continue to be implemented
Eskom, disclosed it will further intensify power at various stages.” It warned that it will still take
cuts. a few weeks for the power generation system to
Rolling blackouts are hitting South Africans fully recover after a recent strike by workers.
in the winter months of the Southern Hemi- It said the company would implement a ‘stage
sphere when many households rely on electricity 6’ level of power cut from Monday (July 4) after-
for heat, light and cooking. Business is angry as noon. ‘Stage 6’ is a level of power cut on an eight
many have been forced to close or spend heavily level system which essentially means Eskom will
on generators to keep the lights on. have to take off almost 6,000 megawatts (MW)
The long-running challenge, caused by of capacity from the grid, and based on other
depressed generating capacity, frequent break- levels, South Africans could see between six and
downs of its aged plants and labour unrest has eight hours of power cut in a day, the global news
not only resulted in some businesses shutting agency said.
down but also had the national currency on the The state entity, also struggling under a
backfoot late last week. $24bn debt, has a nominal capacity to gen-
As the continent’s most industrialised econ- erate 45,000MW, 80% from aged coal facili-
omy battles the crisis, a top organ of President tates, but in a release on Friday (June 1) it said
Cyril Ramaphosa’s African National Congress it had 3, 104MW on planned maintenance
(ANC), which met from Saturday to Monday and 17,431MW of capacity unavailable due to
heard calls for a declaration of a state of emer- breakdowns.
gency to enable his government to firmly deal The Rand national currency weakened again
with the matter, according to News24, an inde- on Friday as power cuts continued. At 1532
pendent publication on July 5w. GMT, it traded at 16.4150 against the dollar,
Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gord- 0.89% lower than its previous close. The rand
han presented a report on the state of the power touched 16.4700 on Thursday, its lowest since
grid during the national executive committee October 2020 but had recovered to around
meeting. 16.4444 by on July 5 mid-morning South Afri-
“He made the point that the problems at can time, according to Bloomberg.
Eskom [are] very complex, with old power sta- Ramaphosa’s government, New24 reports,
tions dying and the capacity of some power sta- is exploring how a balance sheet restructuring
tions being insufficient,” a source told News24. could be done to manage its debt.™
Reuters, citing an Eskom statement,
reported on Sunday that the generation capacity

P8 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 27 07•July•2022