South Africa’s state-owned power utility scheduled nationwide rolling blackouts through Thursday because of a delay in restarting generation capacity that was offline for repairs along with additional equipment breakdowns.
Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. will implement so-called stage 2 loadshedding — taking 2,000 megawatts offline to prevent a total collapse of the grid — during peak-use hours starting Tuesday evening, the company said in a statement. The rand weakened after the announcement.
Less than two weeks ago, the utility forecast a low risk of sustained power cuts as South Africa heads into the winter season that drives up demand for electricity. It resumed rolling blackouts known as loadshedding earlier this year after a 10-month hiatus that resulted from improved maintenance of its plants.
Cost of South African Power Cuts Fell in 2024
Economy lost 83% less than previous year as supply stabilises. Loadshedding had until early 2024 taken a significant toll on the economy — as much as 899 million rand ($49 million) per day, according to central bank estimates — and was among the reasons why the ruling African National Congress lost its majority in last year’s elections. Eskom halted the almost-daily outages, which lasted as many as 12 hours per day, in the weeks before the May national vote. Bloomberg