About R600 billion needed to fix Eskom’s infrastructure – expert

South Africa’s load shedding crisis is nowhere near the end, says energy expert Ted Blom, who warned the country needed piles of cash and a comprehensive five-year plan.

According to his estimates, SA needed about R600 billion to fix existing Eskom’s infrastructure and enable its capacity to produce 50 000 megawatts (MW). Blom suggested Eskom get original equipment manufacturers to come and fix the infrastructure properly.

“In my estimations, it will take up to five years and R600 billion to fix everything up so we can go back to 50 000MW being available. Then we can stop the load shedding and export to the whole of southern Africa like we used to do.”

Skills shortage blow to Eskom

Not only does SA need money and machinery, but it also requires a skills set, as many skilled employees have left Eskom.

Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha said the skills shortages at the power utility is one of the many reasons they are struggling.

“We have said that the largest part of the problem was caused by a lack of generation capacity; the country needs to build capacity to generate electricity. These have to be accompanied by obtaining the required skills and resources to maintain its power stations.”

In an attempt to assist the power utility overcome the skills shortage, civil body Solidarity wrote to Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan on 25 May, offering its assistance to Eskom by redeploying skilled and experienced engineering and technical staff, who are South African citizens, at Eskom.

Last month, Gordhan wrote a letter to Solidarity to ask them to provide Eskom with a list of names of engineers and experts, who could be deployed to Eskom.

“Neither of them [Solidarity or Gordhan] are qualified to judge whether those skills are good or bad and where they must be sent to fix Eskom,” Blom said.

“You need to have somebody who knows what is going on at Eskom technically and skills-wise to be able to make the right decisions,” he said.

Where there’s politics, there are problems

Currently Eskom is so ridden with politics, there is nobody that can make those decisions, Blom said. Blom said he did not see skilled people coming back to Eskom, as some have died, some emigrated and some have started their own businesses.

“If you get booted from Eskom and you are not at retirement age, you need to find an income. You can’t wait for 10 years for Eskom to come back to you.”

Blom said the decision in 2001 to convert the power utility from an independent company to a state-owned entity, was the beginning of the politicians messing with the power giant.

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“They changed the mission of Eskom. They said Eskom now needs to make a profit, where before 2001, Eskom only had to break even.

“Eskom has installed a generation capacity of 50 000MW; why can’t they even generate 27 000MW of power?” Blom asked.

Blom said Eskom won a global award in 2001 as one of the best utilities in the world in New York City; however, they were now probably one of the worst utilities in the world because of ideological and political interference.

He said instead of building Medupi and Kusile power stations, the power utility could have bought an off-the-shelf power station for R34 billion. But when the politicians and the corrupt got control of Medupi, the final price by the board was more than R68 billion.

“The peak demand has been under 32 000MW and, since 2008, Eskom had more than 42 gigawatts (GW) of installed capacity. Even if they just kept the old fleet going well, they would have 8GW spare capacity – without Medupi, Kusile and Ingula power stations.”

Mantshantsha said the power utility received a list of experts from Solidarity but also contacted other organisations, such as the National Society of Black Engineers.

– lungam@citizen.co.za