Energy expert and Director for the Centre for Renewable Studies at the Stellenbosch University, Professor Sampson Mamphweli, says rolling blackouts will stay longer than expected because of the manner in which the government has been handling Eskom’s challenges.
He argues that even new power stations have breakdowns – which is a serious concern if blackouts are to be avoided.
Due to further failures of generation units, Stage 4 loadshedding will be implemented from 09:00 today until 05:00 on Friday in order to manage the emergency reserves pic.twitter.com/OMmqjLKIUX
— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) March 9, 2022
Mamphweli suggests that government should open the market for private power producers to alleviate pressure on Eskom.
“The biggest challenge now is what do we do with the ageing infrastructure at Eskom that is breaking down quite easily?
“And in my view, the government should bring forward the bid-Window Six so that we don’t have delays. So that when bid-window Five project come live, Window Six will start to build. We need to up our game in terms of bringing in new generation capacity as quickly as possible.”
Eskom has escalated rolling blackouts from stage two to Stage Four from 9 am on Wednesday morning due to further generation capacity issues.
The power utility says Stage Four rolling blackouts will continue until 5 am on Friday. Thereafter blackouts will be lowered to Stage Two until 5am on Monday.
“Due to further failures of generation units, Stage 4 load shedding will be implemented from 09:00 today until 05:00 on Friday in order to manage the emergency reserves,” notes Eskom in a statement on Wednesday morning.
