With 5 months remaining in 2022 the extent of the load shedding impact is likely only to rise from the 81 days of load shedding we have seen as of 19 July 2022 (figure 1). Most worrying is the intensity of the load shedding this year. With the economy showing signs of rebounding in 2022, these historical winter load shedding levels have hurt businesses and their recovery.
At Eskom, the problem of unreliable generation capacity gets exacerbated by operational issues, resulting in unplanned outages at multiple generation plants – primarily because of a lack of maintenance. Eskom’s ageing fleet of power stations and unplanned outages have hurt the power producer’s generation capacity for years and these constraints remain a key challenge for future growth.
Figure 1: Trend of increasing days of load shedding (Source: Absa RB Sectors)
Markedly increasing load shedding days since…
Battery energy storage systems to boost reliability and…
