South Africa’s Struggling Eskom Eases Electricity Rationing
South Africa’s Struggling Eskom Eases Electricity Rationing
South Africa’s debt-laden power utility on Sunday scaled back power outages in a sign that electricity supply may be improving.
Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. said it would cut 1,000 megawatts from the grid from 12 pm to 10 p.m., half of what was initially scheduled. The utility will maintain supply cuts at the same levels on Monday but ramp up outages to 2,000 megawatts from 4 pm to 10 pm and the schedule could be repeated until Wednesday, it said in a statement Sunday.
The utility last week implemented rolling blackouts, known locally as load shedding, after some electricity generation units broke down and demand rose due to a cold front. The measures were undertaken to replenish the emergency generation reserves which were depleted over the past week, the utility said.
“Eskom expects several generation units to return to service during the next few days which will help ease the supply constraints,” the company said.
Power rationing is blighting efforts to reboot Africa’s most industrialized economy that has been roiled by the coronavirus pandemic and by years of mismanagement and corruption. The troubled state utility, which provides about 95% of the nation’s electricity, is saddled with 488 billion rand ($29.4 billion) of debt.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.