Load Shedding in South Africa
The worst power cuts ever, are renewable energy sources an answer ?
South Africa experiences regular power cuts or load-shedding as the result of aging coal fired power stations. Eskom, which is a South African public utility company resorts to power cuts whenever there is insufficient generation capacity to meet energy demands.
This year, South Africans have experienced the worst load shedding compared to the past 5 years. More than 50 days of load shedding have been experienced as of 19 July 2022 (refer to the figure below). This value was obtained by summing the number of hours that load shedding was implemented using data from Eskom Data portal.
This translates to a total of 2 475 GWh of energy load shed. The data used in the analysis was up until the 19th of July 2022 which means this number has increased as power cuts continue to be rolled out.
Normally load shedding stages are below stage 4 which means Eskom normally cuts up to 4 000 MW. However, this year South Africa has seen a repeat of stage 6 power cuts. The last time stage 6 was initiated is the 9th of December 2019. The graphs below compare the frequency of load shedding for the last five years. The data used was sourced from EskomSEPush .
About 80% of South African electricity is generated by coal fired power stations (Other official sources puts this number at 84.4%) and only about 7% is from renewable energy sources (refer to the pie chart below).
Eskom has been slowly building up renewable energy capacity especially Photovoltaic capacity or PV. However the renewable capacity is not enough to offset the effects of load shedding.
South Africa’s power system is under severe pressure and there are no quick solutions to solving it. Reliable energy supply is required to alleviate the pressure. Renewable sources can be a solution but more capacity is needed.
Disclaimer: The views and analysis expressed in this article may not be the accurate representation of Eskom. For accurate information refer to official public website. Follow my detailed analysis on Kaggle for this project.
