Better late than never

OW THIS is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning,” said a leader as his country faced a crisis which dwarfed that now faced by South Africa due to Eskom’s inability to supply the nation with a continuous flow of power.

Winston Churchill was referring to victory at the Second Battle of El Alamein in 1942, a milestone that marked the first defeat Germany suffered on the battlefield in World War II. The milestone we celebrate today is the fact that the first unit at the Medupi power station is now producing electricity – four years late and many billions over budget.

It will still be several months before that power starts flowing into the national grid as testing and synchronisation takes place, and it will not be until 2018 that all six units at Medupi are expected to be online. But nevertheless the completion of Eskom’s first new power unit since the power utility first hit the wall in 2008 does indeed mark the end of a dark period when no new power was in sight.

When both new power stations Medupi and Kusile are fully commissioned, then we will see the beginning of the end, but in the meanwhile we can expect some years of rolling blackouts courtesy of Eskom’s ageing and ill-maintained fleet of power stations.

The gravity of the situation was clear when Eskom, while slapping itself on the back for firing up Medupi’s first unit, announced that there was a strong likelihood that there would be load shedding for the rest of the week. A statement it released was not remotely Churchillian, but very Eskom: “Any extra load or faults in the system may necessitate the need to go into load shedding.”

Eskom aptly described this as a painful process necessary to prevent a collapse of the system.

Meanwhile householders are finding it hard to find generators as suppliers run out of stock, and solar power companies are doing a roaring trade as ever more businesses and households make the switch to sustainable, reliable energy.

More electricity price hikes are to come, as are dark nights and a cold winter.

But finally Eskom is getting somewhere.