Locals walk past electricity pylons during frequent power outages from South African utility Eskom, caused by its aging coal-fired plants, in Soweto, South Africa, July 3, 2022. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko//File Photo
South Africa announced its first rolling blackouts in almost three weeks on Tuesday, hours after the nation’s statistics office published data that showed the economy contracted in the second quarter when was hit by record power outages.
Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. will implement so-called stage-2 loadshedding, where it cuts 2,000 megawatts from the grid, until Sept. 10, it said on Twitter. If the utility sticks to these plans, it will bring the total days of blackouts in the third quarter to 34.
Africa’s most-industrialized economy contracted in the three months through June as the worst flooding in almost three decades and outages on more than half of the days in the second quarter weighed on output. Eskom’s continued struggle to meet electricity demand from its old power stations that continually break down after years of insufficient maintenance is weighing on economic growth and business confidence.
This week’s blackouts were caused after generation units at five coal-fired plants that broke down and unit 2 of Africa’s sole nuclear plant north of Cape Town tripped. The process of restarting the unit at the nuclear plant is underway, Eskom said.
