South Africa’s next energy crisis could be worse than load-shedding
The South African National Energy Development Institute’s Professor Sampson Mamphweli says no concrete plan exists to replace the roughly 8,000MW of generation capacity the country must decommission by 2035.
Failure to address the situation could lead to a power crisis “bigger than load-shedding”. However, he highlighted two energy solutions that could be used to replace the lost generation capacity.
“While we are out of the woods for now, there’s a looming crisis. Eskom needs to decommission about 8GW of coal-fired plants between now and 2035,” Mamphweli told Newzroom Afrika.
“As things stand, there’s no proper plan on how we’re going to replace that 8GW.”
“If we don’t quickly arrest that in terms of planning, and bring in new generation capacity as quickly as possible, we might see worse than what we’ve already gone through,” he added.
Mamphweli explained that viable options to replace the lost capacity include renewable energy sources with battery storage and gas-fired power plants.
However, he noted that the latter isn’t currently available in the country and must be established.
“So we need to quickly concentrate on that aspect to ensure sustainable energy supply, otherwise we may see worse than what we’ve gone through in the past few years in terms of load-shedding,” Mamphweli added.
As part of its Integrated Resource Plan, South Africa must decommission various coal-fired power stations by 2035, as it did with the Komati Power Station.
According to Mamphweli, many of the country’s coal-fired power stations are reaching their end of life and are becoming expensive to run and maintain.
He added the shutdown of the Komati Power Station provided a good example of what to do and what not to do when it comes to decommissioning coal power plants.
“They decommissioned the power station before they had proper plans and the money available to deal with the issues around South Africa’s Just Energy Transition,” said Mamphweli.
Komati shutdown headache
The Komati Power Station was decommissioned before Eskom had secured all the funds needed to convert the site into a solar and wind power plant, leading to various delays.
Eskom shut down the power station two years ago. It had been supplying power to the national grid for 61 years.
“After serving South Africa since 1961, the coal-fired Komati Power Station in Mpumalanga has today reached the end of its operating life and has been shut down from midday,” Eskom said in a statement on Monday, 31 October 2022.
Shortly after that, the power utility secured $497 million (then R8.96 billion) from the World Bank and other funders to convert Komati into a renewable energy plant.
“The decommissioning and repurposing of the Komati coal-fired plant is a demonstration project that can serve as a reference on how to transition fossil-fuel assets for future projects in South Africa and around the world,” the World Bank said.
However, the project has faced substantial delays, hammering the Komati economy in the process.
A July 2023 report said a visit to Komati revealed empty streets and numerous “house for sale” signs. Eskom’s decision to relocate Komati Power Station staff to other plants and business operations likely contributed to the economic downfall.
Moreover, the R9-billion loan facility for the renewable energy plant’s construction was still awaiting certain approvals.
“It is still awaiting final regulatory approval before becoming effective, which is expected to be in place by the end of July 2023,” Eskom said.
“While waiting to address the financial challenges, we have continued with project development activities and progressed with the establishment of a training facility.”
Despite these challenges, the mistakes made at the Komati Power Station could help South Africa address future coal-fired power station shutdowns.