South Africa can’t keep the lights on amid worst power crisis

Johannesburg:

From dairy farms failing to keep milk refrigerated to mass suffocation by chickens to ventilators and struggling to preserve carcasses, South Africa is grappling with its worst power crisis in years.

Africa’s most industrialized nation has been hit by crippling blackouts, causing thousands of consumers to take to the streets in protest this week.

Here’s what you need to know about the crisis:

eight levels of sadness

When supply fails to meet demand, state-owned utility Eskom imposes blackouts, which is called load-shedding.

There are eight levels of these scheduled outages, with total outages ranging from two and a half hours to a little over 12 hours in a day.

This month, the blackout is oscillating between stages three and six.

The last two phases have never been implemented but there have been a record number of phase-six days in recent months.

At such times, the power goes off for half a day, and only those with generators, solar panels or wind turbines can find respite.

The growing anger has sparked several protests and lawsuits against officers in recent days.

The opposition estimates that power cuts cost hundreds of millions of dollars every day.

How did South Africa get here?

There are many reasons for the crisis besetting Eskom.

After the end of apartheid in 1994 there was a push to connect areas where the black majority had not previously had electricity.

This, combined with economic growth and a growing population, which has decreased from 45 million to less than 60 million, has fueled demand.

In 2007, the year the power cuts were first implemented, Eskom began construction of two new coal-fired stations to try to keep up the pace.

But older plants are plagued with breakage and require constant maintenance.

And the new plants have faced delays in commissioning, design and construction problems, huge cost overruns and allegations of corruption.

Eskom also blames its problems on sabotage, theft of coal and spare parts by organized gangs – prompting the deployment of the military to protect power plants.

The ailing monopoly has racked up a 400 billion rand loan ($23 billion), equivalent to about a quarter of South Africa’s annual GDP.

Last year, it said it has run out of money to buy diesel, which it burns to make up for shortfall in production due to spoilage.

South Africa uses coal, which it has in abundance, to produce about 80 percent of its electricity.

It is estimated that it needs 1.5 trillion rand to get off fossil fuels. Last year it secured hundreds of millions of dollars in international funding to help it transition to cleaner sources.

Is there any solution?

The government, which the opposition blames for the crisis, introduced a plan last July.

This includes improving maintenance, importing electricity from neighboring countries and speeding up the rollout of renewables, a process that has long been stalled by the protection of the coal industry, which employs about 100,000 people.

Licensing limits for private power generation projects have been removed and a pricing structure for private firms to sell electricity generated from rooftop solar panels is nearing completion, President Cyril Ramaphosa said this week.

The president has warned that the crisis cannot be resolved overnight, although some of his cabinet ministers have claimed it could be over in six to 18 months.

Bertha Dlamini, head of the nonprofit African Women in Energy and Power, cautioned that renewable energy was gathering power but “not fast enough to cushion the country” from blackouts.

“Load-shedding will be with us for many years, it may improve but it is unlikely to disappear completely for the next three years,” he said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)