Assurances of minimal power cuts
Eskom offers a glimmer of hope for winter
ESKOM has moved to assure South Africans that there will be minimal power cuts as the country’s households brace themselves for the winter season.
Eskom’s leadership yesterday gave an update on the operational stability and state of systems at the power utility, which has faced financial woes over the years, and also spoke of its current restructuring and unbundling programme.
Chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer said the past eight weeks of the national lockdown had seen a great reduction in electricity demand, which the utility used to increase its capacity.
Oberholzer maintained that Eskom had remarkably reduced the projected stage 1 load shedding schedules. This, he said, was averted as a result of the short-term maintenance conducted during the lockdown.
“Before we had the lockdown, we forecast 31 days of stage 1 load shedding, so what has helped us during the last eight weeks was doing short-term maintenance.
“When we ran the model again, we are now forecasting three days of stage 1 load shedding over the winter period… However that is based on an 80% probability,” he said.
Oberholzer, however, indicated that Eskom’s system remained unpredictable and unreliable, due to neglect over the past years.
Eskom group executive for generation Bheki Nxumalo urged South Africans to use electricity sparingly during peak hours, which are between 5pm and 8pm.
Eskom chief executive Andre de Ruyter said the power utility’s biggest challenge at the moment was its more than R450 billion debt, which it had to reduce through the sale of non-core assets and increased revenue.
De Ruyter said the utility had also taken steps to slash down its capital expenditure. He added that about 184 senior executives had also left Eskom through a voluntary severance programme.
Despite scepticism by unions and political parties, De Ruyter said the restructuring and unbundling of Eskom was in full swing, including the appointment of boards for its three divisions – which include generation, transition and distribution.
“We have established our boards using internal resources, so no new costs were incurred in setting up those divisional boards.
“We have taken steps to appoint managing directors and we are running these divisions now as separate businesses.
“They have got their own income statements and we are in the process of setting up appropriate balance sheets and apportioning the relevant portion of debt to each of those.”
De Ruyter said while Treasury had committed to giving the power utility a R56 billion equity injection for the financial year, with R23 billion having already been received, the utility was not expecting any additional financial assistance from the state.