[imagesource: Getty]
What’s your appetite for reading about Eskom’s failings and the reality of living with load shedding for years to come?
After all, it’s a Friday and the sun is out and we have already spoken this morning about the insane amount of diesel Eskom is burning through to (sometimes) keep the lights on.
I’ll take the lead here and say I don’t have much of an appetite.
Instead, let’s just get the basics. One of those is the fact that we’re governed by the ANC and thus crippled by a voracious parasite at the top of the food chain.
Additionally, Eskom CEO André de Ruyter said earlier this week South Africa needs “to face up to the facts”.
Via Moneyweb, those facts are grim:
“To expect the Eskom coal-fired fleet to return to its former glory of 80% or 85% EAF [energy availability factor] is going to be very difficult to achieve and will cost an extraordinary amount of money, time and effort,” [de Ruyter said]…
The current shortfall was quantified by De Ruyter as between 4 000 megawatts (MW) and 6 000MW to “address” the risk of load shedding…
This shortfall and the unreliable coal fleet means load shedding will be a regular occurrence until government admits there is a problem and begins to act with some urgency.
In other words, we can’t keep relying on coal to save the day.
According to de Ruyter, the future is “rapidly transitioning to a cleaner and greener generation footprint” by investing in new wind, solar, and natural gas projects.
But there is zero urgency. Our Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy Gwede Mantashe is a big fan of coal and has not, according to UCT Professor Anton Eberhard, “added a single publicly procured megawatt to the grid since his appointment in 2019”:
It is not clear that those in power understand the severity of this crisis, or comprehend that Eskom is not going to get its EAF much higher than 65% in the medium term.
Writing for Business Day, Eberhard went a step further:
The government needs to show more urgency. It could do so by making decisions more quickly. Existing IPPs [independent power producers] should be allowed to export more electricity to the grid. They can, and they are willing. I don’t know too much about Eskom’s standard offer to small generators, but it seems worth exploring. Why has the government not signed off on this, six months after approval by Eskom’s board?
We need to double the power procurement from the IPP office and continue with regulatory and structural reforms that facilitate private and consumer ownership in power.
Ultimately, the government needs to provide greater leadership in making the independent transmission system and market operator a reality, a transparent and fair platform for contracting and trading new power, and providing nondiscriminatory access to the grid with enough capacity to deliver adequate power to consumers who increasingly want choice, competitive prices and a reliable electricity supply.
“Government”. “Leadership”. “Transparent”. Even “adequate” is a big stretch.
But hey, it’s a Friday and the sun is shining. We might not be harnessing its potential to keep the lights on but we can still enjoy it.
I choose to forget about load shedding until it ruins my dinner plans from 6PM onwards.
