By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Photo Credit: Jan Gerber.
Deputy President David Mabuza says government is taking every step to make sure that Eskom is supported in its bid to stabilise the national grid and ensure energy security.
Mabuza was answering questions in the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) on Thursday afternoon.
The Deputy President is the Chairperson of the Political Task Team on Eskom which was established to bring government’s key players together in order to provide political leadership in the resolution of the problems besetting the power producer.
The Deputy President said the task team has achieved several milestones since it was established including:
- Enabling and fostering greater coordination between Eskom and various government departments
- Ensuring that the power producer has a credible and transparent maintenance programme
- Fast tracking procurement of additional energy
- Addressing Eskom’s financial troubles
- Fast tracking ministerial determinations on bid window five
“The political task team was also seized with expanding the correction of plant defects at Medupi and Kusile power stations in order to ensure that the grid has an additional 1000MW of base load capacity to address the load shedding problem,” he said.
The Deputy President acknowledged that even though strides have been taken to assist Eskom in keeping the lights on, some challenges remain.
“In the main, challenges [are] set around the limitation of the aging fleet [and] inability to keep up with the demands of unplanned maintenance and repairs. Inevitably, inadequate energy capacity [has] resulted in declined energy availability.
“This led to the sustained power outages in the month of July, thereby attracting public backlash and that prompted the urgent dedicated Cabinet discussion on further extraordinary measures to immediately bring to a halt what was becoming a perennial national electricity supply challenge,” Mabuza said.
Subsequent to that meeting, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a National Energy Action Plan aimed at achieving energy security.
The action plan includes the National Energy Crisis Committee (NECOM), which includes various departments.
Deputy President Mabuza said now the work of the Political Task Team on Eskom has been transitioned and will be covered by NECOM.
“The immediate priority of [NECOM] is to unlock policy and implementation blockages, streamline decision making processes and eliminating any red tape issues,” he said.
Meanwhile Eskom group COO Jan Oberholzer said Eskom is facing considerable challenges and steps have to be taken to ensure the current and projected future generation gap is plugged, He averred on the first day of industry body the Consulting Engineers of South Africa’s (Cesa’s) Infrastructure Indaba, on August 18.
Oberholzer outlined Eskom’s challenges as broadly being generation capacity, financial and grid access.
He elaborated that, in terms of generation capacity, this is owing to a lack of maintenance, leading to a system that in unreliable and unpredictable. He explained that the country’s infrastructure is aging, which has resulted in a deterioration in generation performance. There is also a loss of critical skills.
With regard to financial issues, Oberholzer said the entity has a weak balance sheet owing to a high debt burden, lower than cost reflective tariffs, low revenue owing to non payment and reduced sales.
Also speaking at the indaba was Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana, who reiterated that some debt relief was being provided to Eskom by the government.
Godongwana reiterated Oberholzer’s sentiments about the need for infrastructure investment, and for this to be ramped up.
However, he noted that there were four main challenges that must be addressed to engender this.
These challenges include the levels of government investment, including under-spending of conventional infrastructure budgets by government institutions, as well as under-provision of maintenance budgets for conventionally procured infrastructure, resulting in declining quality/quantity of services provided by that infrastructure.
Livestream Video Below:
Video Courtesy of Parliament.