By Zuko Komisa
Experts say South Africans should brace for stage 7 & 8 load-shedding this winter.
Eskom experts, analysts, and even the company itself are advising South Africans to be prepared for more severe load shedding.
The troubled power company declared on Sunday night, February 19, that stage 6 load shedding will have to continue indefinitely due to more outages at its power plants.
President Cyril Ramaphosa declared a national state of disaster during his State of the Nation Address at the beginning of February, saying that doing so would enable the national government to act quickly to address the issue and prevent the grid from collapsing.
Kaya Biz with Gugulethu Mfuphi spoke to Lungile Mashele – Energy Economist about the possibility of stages 7 and 8 in the coming months.
LISTEN TO THE FULL CONVERSATION:
Mashele says if Eskom’s generation capacity doesn’t rise, stage 10 load shedding, which South Africa is currently experiencing, may increase.
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‘Reliability maintenance’
“One of the key things that happened in 2015 when we had a similar issue was that the CEO at that time called for planned maintenance for a period of 3 to 4 months, to load shedding at stage 2, this was meant to continue, but didn’t. The COO last year spoke about how they were not able to do the reliability maintenance, owing to a lack of funds, capacity and skills.” says Mashele.
Stage 8
“There is a fear that will go up to stage 8 load shedding, because if keep on this trajectory of not doing reliability maintenance, when are not able to meet the peak demand, which is anything between 23 000 -24 000 megawatts, how are we going to cope in the winter, when 34 000 megawatts is demanded.”
Enoch Godongwana is anticipated to announce details about the tax breaks during his budget speech on Wednesday, 22 February.



