South Africa’s power system is extremely constrained and vulnerable, owing to deteriorating, underserviced power plants and delays in the completion of major new power stations.

The tight system means that any unexpected event, from inclement weather to equipment failure, pushes the country into a power deficit. Rotational load-shedding, which spooked investors in 2008, returned in March 2014, and was followed by further bouts of load-shedding later in the year. This year, load-shedding has threatened to become the norm, with warnings that regular outages should be expected. Eskom has said that South Africans should brace themselves for power-supply troubles for the next three years, while it tries not only to complete the building of new capacity but also to deal with a major maintenance backlog, which will take between 20 and 30 months to resolve.

Creamer Media’s Electricity 2015 report provides an overview of State-owned power utility Eskom and independent power producers, as well as electricity planning, transmission, distribution and the theft thereof, besides other issues.

The report is a summary of information published in Engineering News and Mining Weekly, as well as of information available in the public domain, and does not purport to provide an analysis of market trends.

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