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South Africa's power grid has long been in a deadlock of extremely unreliable and polluting power, corruption and pro-coal special interests that kneecap the entire economy. Now a utility death spiral might be in the making, see this https://businesstech.co.za/news/energy/448430/ford-to-take-manufacturing-plant-off-eskoms-grid-creating-2500-jobs/
The near-monopoly utility Eskom has more coal-fired capacity than the country needs, but no money to maintain it, so it keeps tripping and subjecting the country to rolling blackouts, obviously with tremendous economic cost.
The plants are among the very dirtiest in the world, burning high sulfur coal without scrubbers, another enormous social and economic cost.
The rational thing to do would be to upgrade a part of the fleet, close down the excess capacity to cut costs and pay for the upgrades, but as said the political deadlock doesn't permit this. Some limited upgrades in past years but without meaningful steps to cut costs.
Going into a death spiral of falling revenue, high fixed costs and rising prices is not the transition that anyone would want. Especially as coal exports are going to be falling at the same time, hitting the miners from two sides.
I hope the signs of exodus from the grid will be a wake up call but not very optimistic.
@Jesse_Burton Thoughts?
