Eskom frequently implements power cuts, known locally as load shedding, to protect the grid from collapse as the state-owned utility’s aging and poorly maintained plants can’t meet demand. Regular outages since January have lasted as long as 12 hours a day.
Last year, the country had 3 776 hours — about 157 days — of load shedding, more than triple the amount in 2021, authors including Theo Janse van Rensburg and Kgotso Morema said in a South African Reserve Bank By mid-February this year, the outages surpassed the cumulative totals for 2019 and 2020, the authors said. By May, interruptions to supply had exceeded those for all of 2022.