Country faces decade of blackouts, Wartsila says

Wartsila Oyj, a Finnish company that makes power plants, expects South Africa to face electricity outages for at least another decade unless it installs as much as $8 billion worth of gas-fired generation capacity.

The outages stem from state power utility Eskom Holdings SOC’s failure to adequately invest in new capacity and the maintenance of 14 operating coal-fired power plants. The energy shortages have been exacerbated by the slow ramp up of its two newest plants.

Wartsila’s modeling shows South Africa’s plans to add wind and solar capacity to the grid will be implemented too slowly to prevent outages, Wayne Glossop, the company’s senior business development manager for southern Africa, said in an interview.