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‘Terrible start to 2024’ — nationwide rolling blackouts kick off again, signalling dark year ahead

‘Terrible start to 2024’ — nationwide rolling blackouts kick off again, signalling dark year ahead
Kusile Power Station on 11 Septemeber, 2023.(Photo: Felix Dlangamandla)
Takudzwa Pongweni
By Takudzwa Pongweni
3 Jan 2024
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While Eskom had a bright start to the year as a new power unit came online, an energy expert has cautioned against early celebrations. The power utility also announced rolling blackouts will make a return this week following a streak of suspensions. 

On 31 December 2023, Eskom announced the successful synchronisation of Unit 5 at the Kusile Power Station Project, which was affected by a fire in October 2022. 

The power utility said in a statement on Sunday that the synchronised unit will add 800MW of new capacity to help lessen rolling blackouts. 

“The greatly anticipated Kusile Unit 5 brings hope to the people of South Africa as it helps power the nation and its economy. There is an enormous effort made to continue the remarkable progress on the new build programme and the Generation Recovery Plan,” said Calib Cassim, Eskom’s Acting Group Chief Executive.

Despite this, Eskom resumed load shedding on 2 January, implementing stage 2, and will escalate this to stage 3 from 5 am on Wednesday, 3 January.  “This pattern of Stage 2 load shedding in the morning and Stage 3 load shedding in the evening will be repeated daily until further notice,” said Eskom in a statement. 

The utility blamed the need to reintroduce the power cuts after nearly a three-week break on a setback in its planned maintenance efforts, with three generating units with a potential 2,148 megawatts (MW) capacity not coming back online as anticipated. In addition, the utility recently experienced the unplanned losses of six generating units with a combined capacity of 3,113MW.

“Unplanned outages are currently at 16,231MW of generating capacity, while the capacity out of service for planned maintenance is 8,451MW”.

Low demand and even lower supply available


Energy analyst and managing director of EE Business Intelligence, Chris Yelland, said this resumption of rolling blackouts came as a surprise to many, including himself. 

“Demand for electricity at the moment is still very low, and will only return to normal around the middle of January,” he said.

“Although electricity demand is very low, supply of electricity is even lower”.

Yelland said that over 24,000MW out of service is a record for South Africa. “We have never experienced outages at that level in the past and it sets a new record in South Africa as far as I am aware,” he said. 

Unplanned outages of 16,000MW are a return to some of the worst periods of 2023, while the planned outages are at a very high level currently, said Yelland. 

“The high levels of unplanned breakdowns, as well as the high levels of planned maintenance, was such that even with reduced demand for electricity over this period, we were pushed into load shedding,” he said. 

‘A very bad start to the year’


Yelland said this was ‘a very bad start to the year’, particularly coming as it did, only a day after Eskom announced the successful synchronisation of Unit 5 at the Kusile Power Station Project. 

Unit 5 was nine years behind schedule and should have been synchronised to the grid long ago, according to Yelland. 

Yelland said that while it was an important milestone and a good news story, the public should not expect the unit to make any significant contribution to the grid right now. 

“It is only starting the commissioning process, and it starts from a very low level of power output,” said Yelland. 

“Slowly over weeks and months, it ramps up to full load as they do in the commissioning. They will be switching the unit on and off all the time, sorting out all kinds of problems and it will only be handed over for commercial use in six months”.

Kusile and Medupi to blame for financial difficulties at Eskom


Construction of Unit 6 is still under way and once all six units are in operation, Kusile will be able to generate 4,800MW. 

Yelland said Unit 6 was running eight years late and that much of Eskom’s financial difficulties were the direct result of cost and time overruns at Medupi and Kusile.

“Not only has it brought Eskom to its very knees, it has seriously damaged the South African economy. This load shedding that we’ve experienced for several years now is a direct consequence of the lateness of Medupi and Kusile and the poor construction performance of these power plants,” he said.

Kusile Power Station Kusile Power Station on 11 Septemeber, 2023. (Photo: Felix Dlangamandla)



The power utility said intensified efforts were also being made to return Medupi Unit 4 to service by the end of July 2024. Yelland said although it might not take as long as six months to commission this unit, there could still be challenges. 

“Restarting a unit that has been out of service for three years is not a trivial matter and there may be significant work that is required,” he said. 

Yelland anticipates that it could take a month to sort out the issues and return it to service because they are replacing the entire generator — as the original generator was completely written off due to an explosion in 2021. 

“It is a second-hand generator they are installing and that comes with its own problems. It was not the generator originally intended for this power station, so there will be some extra work in adapting this second-hand generator to fit the existing installation, which was never designed for this particular generator,” said Yelland. 

Eskom appeals against rolling blackouts exemption order


On Friday, 1 December, the Gauteng Division of the High Court in Pretoria handed down a judgment in a case brought by opposition parties in which three judges found that the government was responsible for rolling blackouts, and the numerous failures that led to it.

It also ruled that the government (in the form of Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa) must take steps to stop the interruption of power to public health facilities, police stations, and schools by the end of January.

ActionSA, which was an applicant in the matter, criticised Eskom’s application for leave to appeal against the ruling. 

“Eskom, the President, and the Minister of Electricity specifically want to appeal sections of the ruling which ruled in favour of ActionSA’s request that hospitals, schools, and police stations be exempted from experiencing rolling blackouts and allege that the judgment is too vague,” read the statement.  

The power utility argued the judgment was too vague, and its orders were either unlawful, dangerous, or impossible to implement. 

Yelland said the timeline given in the judgment presented a major problem. 

“I just don’t think it can be done in that time. There are also some practical implications, procurement implications, and some issues in the distribution network that make it difficult to carry out what the judge ordered,” he said. 

The year ahead


Yelland said the availability of Eskom’s fleet at the moment had been declining every year, and declined significantly in 2023. 

“Under an optimistic scenario, I hope that the energy availability factor will not go down further but will stay at the same very poor levels of 2023,” he said. 

Rolling blackouts would be at much higher stages were it not for the typically lower demand in December and early January, said Yelland.

“I do think we’re going to have further load shedding in 2024, but I hope at least it will stabilise and not get worse,” he said. DM

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