MORE ROLLING BLACKOUTS FOR SA

More Rolling Blackouts For SA

South Africa, you’ve been warned. There are more rolling blackouts on the way and it could take 12 to 18 months to get out of the current crisis.

This is according to Eskom’s Chief Operations Officer, Jan Oberholzer.

Oberholzer was a speaker at the AGRI SA Congress last week. He said that Eskom needs about R1 trillion to resolve the current loadshedding crisis over the next 10 or more years.

When asked about the stated-owned enterprise’s 13 coal-powered stations, he said that Eskom would retire nine of them in the next decade and will rely on hybrid systems.

“We have to invest a trillion Rand, and then we have to build at least 8,500km of transmission lines, and we believe for this, we need to put aside R130 billion to build this. So over and above the 8,500km, we have to install about 12 substations,” Oberholzer told delegates.

Currently, stage 2 loadshedding has been implemented with stage 1 loadshedding during the week.

Businesses in South Africa have been struggling to keep up as loadshedding shuts several businesses down while others have to fork out extra money to stay in business due to generators.

Households are also feeling the pinch as solar systems, generators and inverters are being used to keep the lights on at home.

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