The power failures that plunged much of South Africa into darkness last week will not hurt economic growth or cost the nation nearly as much as some have predicted, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel said on Monday.
Factories, mines and homes throughout Africa’s economic powerhouse lost electricity last Thursday without warning, prompting fears that a looming energy crisis could trim the nation’s fast-growing economy.
Some analysts estimated that state utility Eskom would have to spend massively in the coming years to build new power stations to meet increasing demand from businesses and residential consumers.
”The responses tend to be overcooked. The numbers that they generate are complete and utter garbage … It will not affect growth,” Manuel said after a press conference in Pretoria, the country’s capital.
Manuel added that Eskom’s capacity was sufficient for now and that it was normal for power plants to be shut down for routine maintenance, as occurred last week when about 4 600 megawatts of capacity were taken off line.
”Eskom chose what should be the lightest [demand] period,” Manuel said, adding that it was best to carry out such shutdowns ahead of the winter months in South Africa, when demand traditionally peaks.
Eskom, which has been under pressure to repair ageing infrastructure, is in the process of recommissioning three mothballed power plants and has announced plans for massive investments to shore up its capacity.
South Africa’s power woes have raised political temperatures in the past, with critics accusing the government of turning a blind eye to an energy crisis that could worsen as the nation prepares to host the 2010 Soccer World Cup.
The recent cuts, which Eskom attributed to station maintenance and the shut down of a unit at the country’s only nuclear power plant, caused power failures from Cape Town to Johannesburg.
Meanwhile, First National Bank is to spend R50-million on standby generators and uninterrupted power supply units at its branches nationwide in response to power failures, it said on Friday.
Generators have an average power supply of 220 kilowatts each, and would be able to keep a full-service branch running, including air-conditioning, computers, servers, routers and ATMs which consume huge chunks of power, FNB said.
The province with the highest number of standby generators was the Western Cape as this was where most power failures occurred.
On Thursday morning, eight Eskom units went on an ”unplanned outage”, resulting in a shortage of 4 600 megawatts.
One of these was Koeberg’s Unit One, which was out of action from the early hours of Thursday morning when its turbine tripped. Already, 4 900 megawatts were not available because several other units were going through maintenance.
Two of the units — Kriel and Matuba — were brought back on Thursday evening, said spokesperson Fani Zulu. On Friday, another six units — including one on a maintenance outage — were returned to service.
”This places us in a situation where there is enough on the system to meet the demand — even before we talk about Koeberg,” he said. – Reuters, Sapa