Why South Africa can’t keep the lights on

AFP :
From dairy farms failing to keep milk refrigerated to chickens suffocating en masse due to failing ventilators and undertakers struggling to preserve bodies, South Africa is buckling under its worst power crisis in years.
Africa’s most industrialised nation has been hit by crippling blackouts, pushing thousands of consumers to take to the streets in protest this week. Here’s what you need to know about the crisis: The state-owned utility Eskom imposes blackouts, called load-shedding, when supply fails to meet demand.
There are eight levels of these scheduled cuts, with outages ranging from two-and-half hours to slightly more than 12 hours in total in a day.
This month, the blackouts have oscillated between stages three and six.
The last two stages have never been implemented but there has been a record number of stage-six days in recent months.
At such times, the power goes off for half a day, and only those with generators, solar panels or a wind turbine can get relief.
Mounting anger has led to several protests in recent days and lawsuits against the authorities.
Outages cost hundreds of millions of dollars in lost output each day, according to opposition estimates. The crisis besetting Eskom has several causes.
The end of apartheid in 1994 was followed by a push to connect areas where the black majority previously had no mains electricity. This, coupled with economic growth and a surging population, which has swelled from less than 45 million to 60 million, has fed demand.
In 2007, the year power cuts were first implemented, Eskom began building two new coal-powered stations to try to keep pace. But older plants are plagued by breakdowns and are in constant need of maintenance.
And the new plants themselves have suffered from commissioning delays, design and construction problems, massive cost overruns and allegations of graft.