South Africa Threatened with Rolling Blackouts as Planned Maintenance Cuts Eskom Capacity 13%

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Written by Richard Finlayson, Senior International Editor for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--South Africa's high energy industries have been trying to forget the blackout in the country's power supply in 2008. Now. the state-owned power utility Eskom has released a warning of a "very high" risk of rolling blackout nationwide, adding that it was taking every measure possible to prevent the blackouts. This includes working closely with their large customers to ascertain if they can reduce their power load.

For related news item see January 23, 2008 -- South African Business Expansion at Risk with Eskom Power Outages.

The potential power outage problems are due to planned maintenance work, an increase in unplanned maintenance, and a continued increase in demand for power. Planned maintenance has taken 13% of Eskom's capacity out of service.

Maintenance is performed in the South African summer, when demand is lower, but this year Eskom is tackling a backlog, plus unplanned maintenance. Performance from generating plants is down and technical problems are negatively impacting the country's power supply. As people return to work from the festive season and summer holidays, power demand is going up and Eskom is asking for a reduction in electrical power usage.

Commenting on the possibility of rolling blackouts from the current week through February, the Cape Chamber of Commerce said that it was unacceptable that the country's power supply might be prejudiced at a crucial time in the country's economy when the government was demanding that business should create more jobs.

Eskom warned that the country's power supply would be tight until the completion of its two major thermal power stations. The 4,800 MW Medupi is now scheduled for completion in 2015 and Kusile, also 4,800 MW, in 2017. Eskom warned that there could be further delays at the Medupi project due to problems with the boiler contractor.

The situation is not seen to be as threatening as that in 2008, and Eskom's major industrial clients, which cover mining, manufacturing and smelting companies, have said that they would scale down demand if the power supply situation deteriorated, as they have been doing on occasion since 2008.

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