Load shedding could get worse as South Africa heads to winter, electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa warns.
South Africa’s newly appointed electricity minister warned that record electricity outages could get even worse and said the state power utility’s performance targets need to be reviewed to determine whether they are appropriate.
Africa’s most-industrialized nation has been subjected to rolling blackouts every day this year as Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., the state company that supplies about 90% of the nation’s electricity, fails to meet demand from its dilapidated plants. Ramokgopa will visit power stations and meet with business representatives to determine firsthand how much-unutilized generation capacity can be connected to the grid and how quickly — an assessment that should take about four weeks. Thereafter, he intends to release a detailed plan spelling out how much additional power will be brought online and over what timespan.
The central bank estimates that outages, which have been instituted since 2008, will shave 2 percentage points off growth this year. The blackouts have dented support for the governing African National Congress, with opinion polls showing the party is in danger of losing its parliamentary majority in next year’s elections.
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