Eskom will cut 4 GW from South Africa power network

South Africa power utility Eskom has decided to take 4,000 MW off the power grid. On 14 March, the first 800 MW unit of Kusile power plant tripped, exacerbating a shortfall of generating capacity and prompting Eskom to announce a Stage 2 (2 GW) load shedding, that changed into a Stage 3 (3 GW) and finally into a Stage 4 (4 GW) load shedding, after the loss of additional capacity, including 900 MW of imports from Mozambique (a storm damaged the power interconnection to the Cahora Bassa hydropower plant).



Eskom is responsible for 90% of South Africa's power supply and has suffered many faults at its coal-fired plants. The construction of two long-awaited giant coal-fired power projects, Kusile and Medupi (4.8 GW) each, is running years behind schedule and tens of billions of rands over budget. The first units that were commissioned between 2015 and 2017 are operating unreliably and are meeting many technical problems. In addition, many other coal-fired power plants are also experiencing failures due to insufficient maintenance. In mid-March 2019, around 12,000 MW of Eskom’s 45,000 MW capacity was unavailable due to unplanned outages and back-up diesel supplies were also under pressure.



Eskom has a giant ZAR420bn (US$29bn) debt and in February 2019 the national government announced plans to restructure the company into three separate entities with one specific segment each: power generation, transmission and distribution. All three would be put under control of Eskom Holdings. The government also announced that it would support some of Eskom’s short-term debt issues.