On Tuesday, South Africa declared its first rolling blackouts in nearly three weeks, hours after the country’s statistics office revealed data showing the economy shrank in the second quarter despite being hit by unprecedented power outages.
Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. announced on Twitter that it would continue to practice so-called stage-2 load shedding, in which it removes 2,000 megawatts from the grid, until September 10. If the utility follows through with its plans, 34 blackouts will have occurred in the third quarter overall.
The worst flooding in nearly three decades and outages on more than half of the days in the second quarter weighed on output as the most industrialized economy in Africa shrank in the three months ending in June. Economic growth and business confidence are being hampered by Eskom’s ongoing struggle to meet electricity demand from its aging power plants, which keep failing due to years of poor maintenance.
The generation units at five coal-fired plants malfunctioned, resulting in this week’s blackouts, and unit 2 of Africa’s only nuclear plant north of Cape Town tripped. Eskom reported that the nuclear plant’s unit is currently being restarted.
