Paying no heed to the central role of state capture in weakening governance and operations at Eskom, mineral resources and energy minister Gwede Mantashe said the state-owned power utility’s persistent load-shedding was causing more harm to the economy than the institutionalised looting that characterised the administration of former President Jacob Zuma.
Speaking at a signing ceremony for winning bidders in round five of the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme in Pretoria, Mantashe went as far as saying that Eskom’s failure to arrest the decline of the generation fleet could be interpreted as an attempt at overthrowing government.
To bring a swift end to load-shedding, Eskom had to solve its generation capacity problem, Mantashe said.
He pointed out that Eskom was running at very low energy availability factors (EAFs), a measure of electricity output compared with installed capacity. At best, said Mantashe, Eskom was achieving output of 26,000MW or an EAF of about 60%.
“Eskom must attend to this problem. By not attending to load-shedding Eskom is agitating to overthrow the state,” he said.
The lack of stable and sufficient power supply was the main reason for poor economic growth, he added. In the mining sector, load-shedding posed to greatest challenge to growth, followed by the disruptions to rail services operated by Transnet and high levels of crime, Mantashe said.
“In [the third quarter] our GDP grew 1.6%. This could have been 3%, but because of load-shedding the economy can’t move.”
Eskom has said that for the past few months its power stations have been running at an energy availability factor of about 58%, which is below its 60% target for the year, and far off the 75% its new board chair, Mpho Makwana, wants it to achieve.
A key contributor to the low EAF, according to Eskom, was high levels of planned maintenance, which it must do to ultimately improve the performance of its plants.
Management has long maintained and has repeatedly said that while it has turnaround plans to improve the performance of the generation fleet, there was a capacity gap of at least 4,000MW, which must be filled by external suppliers to provide the space to effectively execute the plan.
Capacity constraints were worsened by a backlog in maintenance, which has been building for many years, and the age profile of Eskom’s generation fleet.
President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Thursday that stage 6 load-shedding “is of great concern and I am sure the issue is being addressed by people who were mandated to so.”
Public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan has called on Eskom’s newly appointed board to pressure management to end stage 6 load-shedding with immediate effect.
Godhan, who met with the utility’s board on Wednesday, didn’t rule out sabotage as the reason behind the latest bout of power cuts.
“The frequency of breakdowns is certainly attributable to some element of malfunctioning within the Eskom systems and possibly sabotage as well,” he said.
“We have had to call on law-enforcement agencies to show a stronger presence at all Eskom power stations. Those who are involved in nefarious activities: beware. We will not tolerate any activities whose purpose is not in the national interest.”
Update: December 8 2022
This story contains comments from President Cyril Ramaphosa and public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan
maekot@businesslive.co.za
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