Blackouts cost SA R300bn -- and counting
ESKOM remains on a knifeedge as battered consumers and businesses feel the devastating economic impact of rolling blackouts.
Blackouts had cost South Africa an estimated R300-billion since 2008 and single-handedly wiped out 10% of the country’s potential growth, Dawie Roodt, director and chief economist at The Efficient Group, said this week.
This figure excluded the effect of the recession that hit the country in the second half of 2009, he said.
After four days of intermittent large-scale outages, Eskom has kept the country’s lights on for the past few days, but it faces huge challenges that threaten to drag the economy down to levels last seen in the dying days of apartheid.
Experts have warned, after a coal silo collapsed at Majuba power station, that the energy crisis would have dire consequences for the future of the country.
National Planning Commissioner Professor Anton Eberhard, of the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business, said: “The incident at Majuba is symptomatic of a larger problem . . . Eskom is crippling the economy and is unable to provide enough electricity to power growth.
“Unless we can grow our economy faster, we cannot deal with our enormous challenges of poverty and inequality.”
Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene recently revised this year’s economic growth from 2.7% to a meagre 1.4%.
Johan Muller, programme manager for energy and environment at Frost & Sullivan Africa, said businesses were running at below optimal levels to avoid blackouts.
Eskom embarked on a publicity offensive on Friday to calm customer fury, saying staff had “worked tirelessly to save the country” to return Majuba power station to service.
The incident at Majuba is symptomatic of a larger problem
But its CEO, Tshediso Matona, would not answer direct questions from the Sunday Times about the parastatal’s power woes or its maintenance capacity.
And its staff were instructed not to discuss red flags raised before the collapse of the silo.
Eskom employs 46 919 people to service about 5.2 million customers.
Eskom management has denied prior knowledge of structural defects at the silo, but trade union Solidarity and two engineers at Eskom were adamant that an “incident report” was logged in January, raising concerns about the silo.
Solidarity’s Deon Reyneke said the incident report noted increased vibrations at the silo. More information could not be divulged by a whistleblower because he feared for his career.
Solidarity member Leon Viviers said staff at the Majuba power station had been warned not to speak to “anyone — the media or their union”.
“You have to understand why nobody working there would risk coming out with this information. Their jobs are on the line,” said Viviers.
Eskom said a site inspection in September last year found that the silo was “structurally sound”. At about noon on Saturday last week, staff noticed a crack in the silo and evacuated the area. It collapsed 42 minutes later.
An Eskom engineer with more than 20 years’ experience corroborated the trade union’s version. He asked not to be named.
“I know that there were concerns raised . . . but Eskom could not afford to take it out of action, especially during winter when demand peaks,” he said.
Another engineer said maintenance crews “monitored” the silo but were surprised at how quickly it collapsed.
Eskom said because of the mechanical nature of conveyor-and chain-driven systems, vibrations were often felt at plants. Data already analysed showed no indication that the silo was about to collapse.