South Africa’s Next Energy Challenge: A $21 Billion Grid Upgrade

South Africa is facing a monumental challenge as it seeks to end years of rolling electricity outages that have hobbled the economy: It needs to build and fund a 390-billion-rand ($21 billion) expansion of the national grid so it can connect more power plants.

The transmission system is owned, managed and maintained by Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., which supplies more than 80% of the country’s electricity and has failed to properly maintain its plants or expedite the process of building enough new ones to avert energy shortages. The state utility plans to build 14,218 kilometers (8,835 miles) of power lines over the the next decade, more than three times what it has installed over the past 10 years. It will also have to increase its transformer capacity six-fold and build other infrastructure.