More Woes than Solutions at Eskom

Written by on 15 March, 2021

By: Lindelani Mbatha

Eskom Group CEO, André de Ruyter, says the power utility needs more than R300 billion to comply with emission control regulations.

De Ruyter has been briefing media on Eskom’s operational performance.

On Sunday, the power utility announced the extension of load-shedding to Wednesday due to constrained generation capacity.

De Ruyter says this is money the company does not have.

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de Ruyter says vandalism of infrastructure is costing the power utility more than R2 billion a year.

Last year, Khayelisha community service delivery protests resulted in infrastructure damage to the tune of R31.3 million rand.

“Copper theft costs the South African economy between R5 billion and R7 billion a year and Eskom spends about R2 billion a year replacing stolen cables,” says de Ruyter

He adds that a partnership model between struggling municipalities and Eskom, known as Active Partnering, will be implemented to assist municipalities.

As of 31 January 2021, municipalities owed Eskom R35.2 billion.

“To protect electricity infrastructure in certain high density areas that have high occurrences of illegal connections, Eskom continues to implement load reduction during peak times, when the most damage to our infrastructure occurs,” explains de Ruyter.

 


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