National electricity supply shortage sets in

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South Africa’s current power supply shortage is likely to leave the country vulnerable for a number of years going forward, with some even suggesting that the situation could persist for the next five to eight years if appropriate and immediate interventions are not made.

Until recently, South Africa had excess electricity generating capa- city, owing to a period of overinvest- ment by Eskom. However, this situation has come to an end, and the country is now in a position where it needs to commission additional plants urgently.

Already power outages are common.

Between December 2005 and May 2006, a number of power outages were experienced in the country, in the Western Cape, following damage to one of the reactors at the province’s only power station. Then in early 2007, outages were experi-enced across the country, when higher-than-expected summer demand coincided with unplanned outages and the closure of several power stations for maintenance.

From October 2007 until the end of the year, the country was hit by repeated load-shedding and rolling blackouts, and in January 2008, the crisis reached a new level, with daily load-shedding events. At that point, the South African government released a press statement indicating that it was the view of Cabinet that the unprecedented unplanned power outages must be treated as a “national electricity emergency that has to be addressed with urgent, vigorous and coordi- nated actions commensurate with such an emergency situation”.

Although the situation has since been stabilised to some extent, the risk of load-shedding remains and interventions will be necessary to remedy the problem.