Eskom expects we'll all forget the dark cold nights of the past and, in return, be happy to cough up the outrageous cost increases.
Eskom has made significant operational gains, but the utility’s recovery owes as much to outside factors as its own improvements.Picture: iStock
Remember the bleak days when SA battled daily through Eskom load shedding?
In those dark times, the metaphor of light at the end of the tunnel of corruption and incompetence seemed mockingly inappropriate, so far away did a normal national electricity supply seem.
This week, Eskom expects us to celebrate not only its blackout-free record, but its improvement in the energy availability factor at power stations and that it has spent no money in the past fortnight buying diesel to fuel the open-cycle gas generators which provide “fill-in” power.
We should never praise a fish for swimming, as Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse CEO Wayne Duvenage pointed out…
“Eventually, Eskom is getting to a place where they once were and out of a situation where they should never have got to in the first place.”
Looked at rationally, if not cynically, he and electricity generation expert Chris Yelland correctly point out that Eskom is not the sole architect of its good fortune.
Duvenhage estimates that solar installations across the country – which the government encouraged during the waves of load shedding – account for 6GW of power, or more than an eighth of the total national grid supply.
Yelland said another factor impacting demand for electricity was “the demand destruction caused by the closure of the smelting industry, including ferrochrome smelters, manganese smelters and iron and steel.”
In addition, a massive bailout by National Treasury “helped ease its liquidity problems and enable it to buy spares and contract the necessary people to do the maintenance properly”.
Eskom expects we’ll all forget the dark cold nights of the past and, in return, be happy to cough up the outrageous cost increases it wants from the national regulator to compensate for the loss of revenue from municipalities which are being stolen blind by illegal connections.
Thanks, but no thanks.
