S.Africa: Rolling Blackout Mystery: The big load shedding mystery that still escapes us

(000228.79-:E-000157.73:N-:R-SU:C-30:V)   

The big load shedding mystery that still escapes us

National Treasury says that it hasn’t got any indication of how badly load shedding has impacted municipal finances – and it will take a very long time to find out.

Responding to a parliamentary Q&A this past week, the Treasury said it has not yet been able to quantify the financial losses incurred by municipalities due to load shedding.

It added that this is not only reserved for load shedding, noting further that the additional costs and losses incurred by municipalities due to theft and damage of electricity infrastructure (because of the extended stages of load shedding) are also absent.

“This issue is technical in nature and requires further work to be done in order to quantify the financial impact of it. National Treasury’s reporting structure by municipalities, unfortunately, does not
accommodate data of this nature,” it said.

“We understand that the South African Local Government Association may have undertaken some work in this area; the details of this work have not yet been shared with the National Treasury,” it said.

Trying to quantify the damage and losses incurred due to load shedding is a nigh-impossible task.

Listed companies reported billions of rands in trading hours lost due to blackouts, and billions of rands more spent of diesel to power generators to keep operations going during outages.

The closest indications given of the economic impact of the outages has been delivered through the South African Reserve Bank, which estimates that stage 1 of load shedding could cost the economy anywhere between R130 million and R300 million a day, up to an impact of R1 billion at stage 6.

These estimates have been revised downwards over the years as businesses and households adapted to the outages. Before the prevalence of solar and diesel generators to combat load shedding, analysts estimated that load shedding cost the country R1 billion per stage, per day.

On a macroeconomic level, the near-permanent levels of load shedding experienced in the county since September 2022 have wiped two whole percentage points off South Africa’s GDP growth in 2023, according to the Reserve Bank, and contribute around 0.5 percentage points to overall inflation.

Analysts have estimated that South Africa’s economy could have been at least 10% bigger had it not been for the outages.

The pain continues

The latest Power Blackout Statistics from independent energy analyst Pieter Jordaan for the 38th week of 2023, ending 22 September, shows that South Africa’s record bout of load shedding continues unabated.

So far this year, the country has experienced a cumulative total of 62.1 days of blackouts – hours of power off during load shedding, which has been in almost permanent effect.

The full year projection for 2023 is for a full 85.1 days of blackouts – though this has eased somewhat after a sudden drop in blackout levels, recently.

In 2023, the record for blackout hours held by 2021 was surpassed on 27 January, and the 2022 record was broken on 9 May. The trend shows that the accumulated blackout time for 2023 would be double the 2022 record, by around mid-October.

Over the past week, the blackout trend plunged compared to last week, following some erratic daily load shedding announcements.

The quarterly blackout trend moved sideways due to the dramatic turn in the short-term trend over the past week. The latest Eskom performance metrics support the utility’s claims of improved (albeit short-lived) coal-fired output.

The data also show how this was precipitated by noticeable daytime demand gaps of up to four gigawatt in the days leading up to the long weekend.

The annual blackout trend eased. The velocity of the past week’s down stroke was enough to visibly influence the one-year trend.

Source: https://businesstech.co.za/news/energy/721120/the-big-load-shedding-mystery-that-still-escapes-us/

jlamprecht