SA faces new crisis: Ramokgopa warns Gauteng’s load reduction the ‘tip of the iceberg’

South Africa is not out of the woods yet when it comes to load shedding, however, load reduction is the country’s new crisis despite the power utility generating enough electricity to go around.

Eskom’s winter outlook planned for 14,000MW of unplanned outages, with anything above that necessitating stage 2 load shedding.

ALSO READ: Soweto residents fed up with ‘unfair’ load reduction

However, the power utility has kept the outages at 12,000MW, Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said on Monday.

Now the country faces a new crisis called load reduction, which might spread from Gauteng to the rest of the country.

‘Not Eskom’s problem’

City Power releases daily load reduction schedules that see some areas without power for at least two hours a day “to avoid network overloading in high-density areas”. This time, however, the problem is not with Eskom, said Ramokgopa.

“We are having a situation where there are many parts of the country, many households that are experiencing situations where they go for hours without electricity,” said Ramokgopa.

“We had load shedding, where demand exceeded supply. Now we’re sitting with a different problem, which has been exposed by the fact that the Eskom generation side has done exceptionally well in ensuring that we’re able to meet demand.”

ALSO READ: Eskom implements load rotation in Soweto: Here are the affected areas

According to Ramokgopa, municipalities have been implementing load reduction due to the lack of infrastructure to distribute power to the masses.

“There is little to no investment in the replenishing, maintenance, upkeep, protection and modernisation of the infrastructure. Municipalities are under severe strain, this is why they implement load reduction,” said Ramokgopa.

“Essentially this is to say the distribution infrastructure does not have the capacity to meet the reticulation demand.

ALSO READ: City Power’s load reductions could affect businesses’ output and profits

“Households now do not have electricity during parts of the day. That has nothing to do with the performance of Eskom, and everything to do with downstream inaction on the part of municipalities. This is exclusively municipalities’ responsibilities.”

Energy poverty in SA

According to Ramokgopa, South Africans are likely going to see load reduction across the country, especially in municipalities where Eskom is not responsible.

This is also due to what Ramokgopa referred to as “energy poverty”, where the electricity is there, but people cannot afford it.

ALSO READ: City Power implements power cuts in Joburg

“The electricity is there, but people cannot afford the cost of electricity and will go for some time without electricity. The tariffs are increasing exponentially and people cannot afford it.”

When people cannot afford to pay for electricity, it gradually erodes the income base of municipalities, leaving them with no money for infrastructure maintenance.

“Few people pay for electricity, the payment goes to the broader kitty of the municipality and then during the budgeting cycle, the electricity department must compete with other departments for money.

“They’re likely going to be low on the queue, so capital allocations are going to be given to other departments to the neglect of the electricity infrastructure. As a result, municipalities’ electricity departments can’t replenish these assets.

ALSO READ: City Power says load reduction is ‘vital’

“What you see in Tshwane and Joburg is [the] tip of the iceberg, where they’re not investing in municipal infrastructure. It’s collapsing, it will become worse.”

The Electricity Ministry and the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) are collaborating to address the crisis.