Unprecedented power outages in South Africa this week had a devastating impact on small and large businesses alike
JOHANNESBURG - South Africa’s state utility Eskom will work to stabilize the national power grid by the end of March in the wake of the country’s most severe blackouts in a decade, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Wednesday.
“Management has given us an assurance that they are trying to stabilize the system,” he told a press briefing following the meeting. Eskom earlier announced it planned to reduce national grid supplies by 2,000 MW on Wednesday, down from a 6,000 MW reduction on Monday. But the company added that the probability for continued loadshedding, or planned rolling blackouts, “remained high for the rest of the week”.Chief Operations Officer Jan Oberholzer told Reuters the power cuts earlier in the week were caused by a “perfect storm” of extreme rainfall and breakdowns at coal-fired power plants.
The breakdowns were likely to persist as Eskom has neither the spare generating capacity nor the money to take all of the faulty coal units off-line and overhaul them, Oberholzer said. But he added: “It has created a lot of uncertainty over whether we can rely on energy security in South Africa, and that in itself is going to damage economic growth.”
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