At stage 8 loadshedding, Eskom could cut off electricity supply for at least 48 hours, energy expert Mike Rossouw warned in Thursday’s interview with eNCA.
48 hours of no power at stage 8 loadshedding?
Rossouw, who has been sounding off the alarm about an impending disaster at Megawatt Park for years, set off a wave of panic when he warned that, more than likely, there may be a 50% possibility of loadshedding escalating beyond stage 4.
The latter, Eskom turned to in mid-April 2022 after two unplanned breakdowns were reported at the Majuba and Tutuka power stations, and according to Rossouw, the mid-to-long-term outlook suggests things may get worse.
“The economy is being destroyed, there’s no doubt in my mind. I predicted and told — this was going to happen a while back. I also explained what they are doing wrong but they seem to persist that they are at, which just means that loadshedding is going to get worse,” the independent energy expert warned.
Rossouw’s remarks come at a time when Eskom has reduced loadshedding to stage 2, occurring at peak demand hours, which are between 17:00 and 22:00 on winter weekdays.
In one of his weekly newsletters published in late April 2022, President Cyril Ramaphosa had listed legacy issues and the gradual deterioration of Eskom’s infrastructure as the reason behind the prolonged rotational power cuts South Africans have endured for more than a decade.
His answer, at the time, was the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers Procurement Programme that he relaunched in 2018.
This alternative source of electricity brought more than 7 200MW of capacity to the power grid, but as it’s been witnessed recently, it’s had very little impact on preventing loadshedding.
Even worse, Rossouw adds, Eskom “are in a position where they can’t even predict what’s going to happen in a few hours ahead.”
“The [power] plants are breaking down that frequently, and so unexpectedly because they are not in control of the situation. So, they are just going from one breakdown to the other and continue to do so and, again, they don’t have sufficient resources, and the ones that they’ve got, they are not being utilised properly,” he said.
Asked if a blackout was on the cards, Rossouw indicated that this was impossible since loadshedding is a useful tool Eskom uses to replenish the power grid from severe pressure.
However, he did warn that stage 8 loadshedding was “very possible.”
“At the moment, there’s a better than 50% chance that we’re going to go above level 3 and 4, and so on… There’s a good chance that we’ll see higher levels of loadshedding, to what extent, is hard to predict because they doin’t know what they are going to tomorrow or the next day,” he added.