Unable to turn on lights or heaters, cook dinner or charge their phones, South Africans spend their winter evenings in darkness and a low-tech life.
Power outages, known here as load shedding, worsened late last month after strikes erupted at nationwide utility monopoly Eskom, leaving coal-fired power plants unable to operate or maintain.
Power outages in South Africa are a notorious, long-standing problem.
But the frequency of power outages — two to three times a day and up to four hours at a time — is at its worst since a somber episode in December 2019, and many people are furious.
“It’s like we’re back to apartheid life, where we’ve gone back to candles and paraffin stoves,” said Rebecca Bheki-Mogotho, a City of Johannesburg official.
Their comparison was to life under South Africa’s former segregationist regime, which deprived the black majority of basic infrastructure and services.
South Africa, the continent’s leading economy, relies on coal to generate more than 80 percent of its electricity.
The country has plenty of coal, but most of the power plants are aging, in need of repairs, or scheduled to shut down in the coming decades.
“We haven’t done what we should have done in the last five to 10 years,” energy analyst Clyde Mallinson told AFP.
“We’ve gotten into a situation where we’re desperately trying to fix what’s broken rather than forestalling it.”
– 101 days power failure –
The pay dispute that was exacerbating the crisis ended on Tuesday with Eskom workers accepting a seven percent increase, which the utility said in a statement “will be a struggle for Eskom to afford it”.
But even with workers back on the job, Eskom warned that the maintenance backlog would “take some time” for the system to recover.
Already saddled with debt, the public entity is struggling to recover from years of alleged mismanagement and corruption, making it a key entity under investigation for state bribery during a four-year public inquiry.
In order to close the large supply gap, Eskom relies on reserve gas turbines that blow through 14 liters of diesel (3.7 gallons) per second. Seven of those turbines were operational on Friday.
The cost of using diesel as a substitute fuel is stratospheric.
Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter said the company spent 1.54 billion rand ($93.8 million) in June alone – more than double its original budget.
It also spent more than double its annual budget on diesel just mid-year.
The great waste is still not enough to avoid outages that can cause havoc, from delays at intersections with traffic lights out to disruptions at substations that prolong power outages.
In April, the company warned that the country could experience up to 101 days of load shedding this year due to outages.
– Delayed renewables –
At least 10,000 MW of renewable wind and solar power would have needed to be brought on-grid since 2015 to keep up with demand, Mallinson said.
An intensive construction strategy to offset that over the next two years would defuse the problem.
“We have to build fast, like our lives depend on it,” Mallinson said.
The mining industry, the country’s economic backbone, has started investing in self-generation from renewable energy, Henk Langenhoven, chief economist at the trade association Minerals Council South Africa, told AFP.
“As the problems … with Eskom’s nuclear power supply increase and the shortages increase, the pressure and inclination to actually go down this route will become even greater,” Langenhoven said.
Eskom senior officials have similarly repeatedly called for the rapid development of new energy sources.
But in February, Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe said coal will remain “a mainstay” of South Africa’s electricity mix “for the foreseeable future”.
This is despite South Africa being pledged at least $8.5 billion by rich nations at last November’s UN climate summit to support its transition to a low-carbon world.
The country’s energy load is expected to continue to increase in the coming years.
Electricity demand could triple by 2040 as transportation and other industries shift to electrification, Mallinson said.
Without quick investments, load shedding will remain a constant.
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