Of coal and power – or not

It is always great to arrive at home after a long day at work to find the lights out after Eskom has switched off the lights, the power and one’s sense of humour along with it. For four days in a row, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, stage two load shedding was implemented from 5pm to 10pm.

Last night a generating unit at Lethabo Power Station was taken offline for repairs.

It’s the time to unwind, cook supper, do homework with children, laundry and all the things which go into setting up for the next day.

And when you’re sitting in the dark, all one’s plans set back by two hours or more when the lights don’t come back because a substation has blown up, it’s reasonable to be furious at the government which brought all of us here.

Bad planning, worse execution of the bad plans, corruption which was glossed over, a law system so convoluted “interpretation” of the law is wide open and allows simple cases to go all the way to the Constitutional Court, bolstered in large part by so much red tape investigations can take years to complete.

Throw into the mix power stations which should have been shut down years ago, modern power stations which keep tripping and the nanny state clinging to coal as a power source because there is simply no vision in the department of mineral resources and energy.

Perhaps government is terrified of upsetting the coal transport body – which wouldn’t be problematic if it found a use for approximately 60 million tons per annum of discarded coal, which was estimated to have accumulated to more than a billion tons already back in 2001.

According to Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe, the coal sector produced approximately 248Mt of saleable coal in 2020. “It was the highest earner of total local sales revenue [at R85.02 billion],” he told the Coal Colloquium Council for Geoscience Office.

“The sector generated [R45.55 billion] of total foreign exchange earnings (R449.83 billion).”

Certainly, the money coal generates – especially if not much electricity is being generated – is nothing to be sneezed at, even if Eskom’s power plants are to clean air what Russia is to a “conflict” in Ukraine.

And with load shedding being implemented at the drop of a generation unit or two, it hardly seems plausible this money isn’t being thrown at Eskom by the fistful. But no, Eskom sits saddled with R392 billion debt, which government – i.e. you – is considering taking over.

To add insult to injury, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana wants Eskom to sell some of its assets, which is a great idea when the only other “assets” Eskom has are power stations in worse shape than the economy.

So, while all of this is going on, or not, maintenance is ad hoc and Band-Aid deep.

Few power stations have escaped Eskom’s yoyo approach to electricity.

These include units at Kriel, Grootvlei, Majuba, Kusile, Matimba, Lethabo, Hendrina, Tutuka, Arnot, Grootvlei (again), Matla, Kriel (again), Grootvlei (again, again), Hendrina (again, again) and Matimba (again).

There used to be a running gag: the last person to leave SA should switch off the lights.

I wouldn’t worry about that any more, government has taken care of it.

Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana wants Eskom to sell some of its assets, which is a great idea when the only other ‘asset’ Eskom has are power stations in worse shape than the economy.