"Worse loadshedding lies ahead for SA," warns expert
Energy expert Ted Blom believes South Africa is yet to experience the worst of loadshedding, with the possibility of stage 6 and stage 8.
This comes after the embattled power utility implemented stage 2 loadshedding from Monday morning.
The continuous power cuts made a comeback on Thursday and the power utility wanted to restore full power supply by Sunday, however, it battled to return several generation units to service.
Blom believes the power utility was underestimating the amount of power it was shedding from the national grid.
“When Eskom says we are having Stage 1 load-shedding or shedding 1,000MW, to the economy it is in fact a 3,000MW shortage,” says Blom.
“I feel comfortable saying I will not be surprised that between now and the end of winter we will experience level 6 loadshedding and also level 8 and above is a possibility, it is a nightmare, it is not good for the industry, it is terrible for investment but it is a fact and only a fool will ignore facts that are on the table, this is their numbers and my analysis is based on their numbers,” he adds.
He was speaking to the Free Market Foundation’s Chris Hattingh during the latest episode of the Free Marketeers podcast.
Blom says the new power stations at the country's power utility are not effective enough.
He cited corruption, political deployment, and state capture as the reasons that led to Eskom struggling.
“The new stations are not capable of adding the required supply to the grid. Medupi, for a long time, ran at less than 60% availability, they kept on spinning the story that the problem is the old power stations and the new ones are a little bit late. What they don’t tell the public is that the new ones are not functioning well. Medupi at its best runs at 60-69% availability and Khusile at 19% availability, this takes us back to competency and corruption."
He says consequences of not fixing Eskom would result in continuous loadshedding for the next five years.
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