Growth in electricity consumption in South Africa has continued to increase in line with higher electricity imports, with the amount by which exports exceed imports dwindling as a result, economic analysts said on Thursday.
“After having been a net exporter of electricity for the past four years, with annual exports exceeding imports by some 4 000 gigawatt-hours on average, exports of electricity for the first quarter of 2007 are only some 300 gigawatt-hours higher than imports.
“If this were to be extrapolated for the rest of the year, net exports can be expected to exceed imports by only 1 200 gigawatt-hours,” explained the analysts.
They said while the first quarter saw electricity production increase by 4% compared with the first quarter of 2006, growth in imports of electricity over this period surged by 42,7%. In March alone, imports were unchanged from January and February, while in the previous two years, imports dropped off sharply after the first two months of the year.
“Electricity production for the first quarter of the year is 4%, which is the highest rate of first-quarter growth since 2004. In absolute output terms, electricity production in March has been exceeded only during the May-August winter period of last year,” the analysts pointed out.
“This is impressive, as there are ongoing concerns over the ability of Eskom to meet the country’s electricity demands through domestic supply.
“However, the current problems that Eskom is facing have more to do with the maintenance and upgrading of its distribution network than its productive capacity, and higher electricity output may not prevent power cuts in the months to come,” they added.
“During the next two or three years, there is very little new capacity that is being added to the national total, bar the de-mothballing of three coal-powered stations in Mpumalanga and a couple of smaller stations near Mossel Bay.
“This helps to explain the increasing drive towards importing electricity and the resultant divergence between the growth in electricity production and consumption on a national level,” concluded the analysts.
Both the year-on-year consumption and production of electricity rose in March, with production increasing to 4,4% from February’s 3,4%. The increase in consumption was even more impressive, rising to a three-year high of 6,7%.
Even on a seasonally adjusted month-on-month basis, growth in production rose to 1,1%, and consumption surged to 1,5%. — I-Net Bridge