Seeing much of the public recovering from the heavy hit of the pandemic, South Africa’s focus will soon shift to the recovery of its economy. This however may be difficult to do because of the country’s widening energy gap.
The investment bank economist of BNP Paribas has predicted that this may lead to many mishaps in the recovery of the economy.
During the year 2021, Eskom has faced many issues which resulted in many unplanned loads shedding events along with having to fix the ageing powerplants, which kept South Africa in the dark for most of the year. Powellants were neglected due to the corruption within Eskom.
BNP experts expect this electricity gap to widen even further this year which may have the economic growth below 1.0%
Eskom system reports show that there is a risk of load shedding stages 1-2 for every month this year. With this risk threatening south Africans productivity, this will affect the economy’s recovery by 1% which South Africa can not afford to lose.
In December 2021 Eskom chief executive Andre de Ruyter warned that South Africa’s power system remained unreliable and unpredictable despite the ongoing maintenance.
” We have the emphasis that the power system is unreliable and unpredictable due to insufficient maintenance of generation Plant over many years. Maintenance outages may take around 24 months to plan, and take from 3 to 6 months to execute.
“The response to this pandemic prevented us from doing much maintenance as we would have liked while prevailing liquidity challenges continue to constrain funds available for maintenance,” he said.
Eskom’s focus this year will be on the planned establishment of a national transmission company in south Africa (NTCSA), BNP Paribas said
Which may slow down future licensing agreements.
Be prepared for more unpredictability, for having your lights kept on this year.
Source: Business tech
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