Pravin Gordhan will appeal load-shedding exemption court order

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South African public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan said his department would appeal a court ruling that government hospitals, state schools and police buildings be exempted from power cuts.

The department has “serious concerns about the implications of the court ruling on the current efforts to stabilize the national grid and get the country out of load-shedding,” Gordhan said in a statement on Monday, using a term for rotational blackouts.

The ruling by the Pretoria High Court on 5 May followed an application by opposition parties, labour unions and civil society groups.

A full bench of the High Court ruled that the government had failed in its constitutional and statutory duties to ensure citizens’ rights to healthcare, security, and education.

It ordered that public enterprise minister Pravin Gordhan “take all reasonable steps within 60 days” to prevent the interruption of electricity supply due to load-shedding.

In instances where buildings or sites could not be isolated from the grid to allow for exempting them from load-shedding, Gordhan must ensure the provision of backup power equipment like generators.

In a responding affidavit, former Eskom CEO André de Ruyter warned that such exemptions would pose a serious and unacceptable risk of a national blackout.

Eskom explained that isolating and excluding particular customers from load-shedding was technically impossible as they were embedded in the utility’s distribution network.

Therefore, exempting the essential facilities would result in unessential entities — such as nearby homes and businesses — also having reduced or no load-shedding, meaning there would be very little load left to shed to reduce demand.

Eskom would also have to stop critical planned maintenance on power station units to try and ensure sufficient supply.

Even so, electricity demand could eventually exceed availability, causing the grid to become unstable and power stations to start tripping, resulting in a blackout.

The alternative — supplying all essential services with generators — would come at a massive cost to the South African taxpayer, according to Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse CEO Wayne Duvenage.

“It’s going to cost the taxpayer a lot because the hospitals and police stations are funded by general taxes,” Duvenage said. “It’s not just the generators; it’s the diesel.”

Duvenage also pointed out that most state hospitals already had generators.

Assessment of Eskom’s coal power stations

An independent assessment of state power utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd.’s coal-fired power plants will be incorporated into the company’s corporate plan for the 2024-25 financial year, the National Treasury said.

The outcome of the assessment, which is being led by vgbe energy e.V., will be shared with the National Energy Crisis Committee once it’s concluded by July, the Treasury said in a statement on Monday.

The Treasury also said that plans to write off a portion of municipalities’ outstanding debt to Eskom will have no additional fiscal implications for the sovereign, according to the statement.

Reporting with Bloomberg.