A reworked version of South Africa’s long-term power plan will soon be presented to cabinet, designed to help draw a line under the electricity blackouts that have crippled the country for a decade, officials said on Wednesday.

The last plan, which mapped out potential power supply scenarios up to 2050, was only released in January. It made provision for a broad range of power sources including natural gas, nuclear and renewables alongside coal, currently the dominant power source.

Energy officials told a news conference the so-called Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) needed to reflect new data, in particular the sharp improvement in state utility Eskom’s performance this year.

After more than a decade of regular power cuts, Eskom has not implemented load shedding since March.

“There are substantive changes from the previous IRP,” said Titus Mathe, CEO at the South African National Energy Development Institute.

Previous modelling assumed Eskom’s energy availability factor — a measure of its plant performance — would be around 52% and not growing much, while the new assumption was for about 60%, with scope for improvement, Mathe said.

Grid constraints on Eskom’s transmission network will also be addressed in the revised plan, which will be based on one long-term projection until 2050.

Read: Smart tech can be a magic fix for South Africa’s energy crisis

Targeted consultations will start next week, and the government aims to take the revamped plan to cabinet by the end of November, energy minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa told the same briefing. — (c) 2024 Reuters

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