How Eskom burns your money

Stage 4 load shedding is here for the rest of the week as Eskom battles to fill its diesel tanks for the generators – and it’s costing a bundle.

At R500 000 per hour to run one generator – and there are 20 of them – it’s a hefty toll on the taxpayers’ pockets.

Just on Sunday, Eskom ran nine generators, plus four independent ones, for 24 hours. That works out to 312 hours in one day.

And ongoing graft at the embattled power utility is not helping. Three people have been released on bail of only R5 000 each, for allegedly stealing about R100 million worth of fuel oil per month from one power station.

ALSO READ: Eskom has guzzled up all its diesel, and now we’re in stage 4

According to political economic expert Daniel Silke, years of corruption, poor policy implementation and bad management had plunged the country into a ever-worsening electricity crisis.

“The country is owed a much greater degree of transparency from government as to where the exact problems lie on how to deal with them. We have seen very little independent verification of the root causes behind the current load shedding,” Silke said.

Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha told Radio 702 about the hefty diesel bill.

“There are open-cycle gas turbines where each generate 150MW, which costs Eskom R500 000 per hour. There is a
maximum of 20 which, if we ran all at the same time, will cost R10 million per hour.

“We are within budget at this moment of the diesel bill at around R4 billion which has to be run for the year, but of course that is money that we should not be spending solely on diesel.”

Mantshantsha said Eskom was working on a budget for 2022 to cater to the turbines which required the continuous usage of diesel.

“Diesel has to be utilised to supplement generation capacity, thus diesel will be budgeted for as required for as long as there are generation capacity shortages.”

The three people accused of stealing tankers full of diesel, will appear in court again in February. “Jessie Phindile Kubeka, who is 51% shareholder in a supplier company and Eskom employees Sarah Nomsa Sibiya (senior technician operating) and Bhekizizwe Solomon Twala (senior storeperson) all face the same charges,” Mantshatsha said.

Energy expert Clyde Mallinson said there was not enough money to keep Eskom functioning.

“It was not a case of what the allocated budget should be going to, but what should be taken away from the rest of the country and directed to Eskom.”

ALSO READ: Heads must roll at clueless Eskom

Last month, the department of mineral resources and energy released a statement about the procurement and signed agreements with 93 Independent Power Producer Projects, which totalled 7 308MW.

Mallinson said this announcement was nothing new and South Africa was doing things back to front.

“The power that is being spoken of is power which was procured in 2014. That was six years ago,” said Mallinson.

“The ones that are coming online now are the ones from six years ago that should’ve been online already. It’s political speak. The staff that will be added was procured in 2014 and then stalled for three or four years.

“We basically haven’t been building our new house fast enough, meaning we cannot move out of our coal house into a new solar house,” he said.

– asandam@citizen.co.za