South Africa has reached the last resort to prevent the collapse of the power system country-wide.<\/p>\n
With this in mind, South Africans ask: \u201cHow did we get to a place where load shedding is necessary?\u201d<\/p>
According to Eskom, \u201cIn the past decade, South Africa has had a steady increase in the demand for electricity because of robust economic growth.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe continued growth in the economy has exhausted Eskom\u2019s surplus capacity for electricity generation and reduced its reserve margin progressively.\u201d<\/p>
According to a statement made earlier, the company\u2019s CEO, Tshediso Matona, said: \u201cLack of maintenance over the years has led to load shedding.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eskom documents reveal that the company expects the reserve margin to continue on a downward trend for the next few years until substantial new base-load power plants comes on line.<\/p>\n
In spite of new capacity coming on line, including bringing back the mothballed power stations and building open-cycle gas turbines, the demand is still higher than the available capacity.<\/p>\n
Eskom\u2019s short term challenges include the following:<\/p>\n
Work with customer groups and stakeholders to find and agree on acceptable solutions<\/p>\n
While this is Eskom\u2019s plan, the Democratic Alliance (DA) has launched its \u2018Power to the People Campaign\u2019 during the month of March.<\/p>\n
The party believes the government needs to action the following in order to effectively deal with the challenges Eskom has been facing recently:<\/p>\n