Eskom keeping us in the dark about rolling blackouts
On Wednesday SA woke up to another rolling blackout nightmare. Eishkom had done it again. Surprised? Probably not. Confused, maybe. Barely four weeks ago Eskom board chair Jabu Mabuza assured the nation that the power utility was not planning any outages in September and October. Mabuza was responding to a letter written to him by the DA. The opposition party had indicated that it had it on good authority that Eskom had informed municipalities of imminent blackouts. Granted, in that same response Mabuza went on to say the risk of power cuts remained as “we ramp up plant maintenance”. And, true to the later statement, Eskom authorities said the new wave of blackouts were due to loss of additional generation‚ delays in the return to service of units that were on planned maintenance, and limited diesel supply.
While this may be true, it raises a number of questions.
Could it be a coincidence or was the DA correct? Were municipalities informed of imminent blackouts, and if so did they communicate this to their customers?
The blackouts also feed another narrative: that Eskom might be trying to arm-twist all stakeholders so that it gets its desired tariff increases.
Last week the debt-ridden power utility approached the North Gauteng High Court to challenge the National Energy Regulator of SA’s refusal of its requested average of 16% increase for the next three financial years.
Nersa set the ceiling at 7.6%. Eskom argued the double-figure increases were necessary for it to sort out its debt, now standing at R440bn.
Conspiracy theories aside, Eskom remains the biggest single risk factor to the economy of SA and this has been echoed by the ratings agencies.
Blackouts have far-reaching consequences. One of the first casualties of the current spate of outages were the matric pupils sitting for their IT practicals. While the damage to the economy is yet to be quantified, we may be sure it will run into millions.
We surely don’t expect any miracles from the current board considering the extent of Eskom’s ruin. But the least the board can do is communicate effectively so that, as consumers, we can try to prepare for eventualities as best we can.
Could it be a coincidence or was the DA correct? Were municipal authorities informed of imminent blackouts?