The South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry said that it is seeking answers from President Cyril Ramaphosa and his Cabinet ministers about the true state of Eskom.
SOUTH African business called for greater transparency with Eskom as the energy crisis worsened after the struggling utility ramped up severe power cuts on Sunday.
Eskom plunged the country into Stage 6 load shedding for the second time this year on Sunday morning, after a generation unit tripped at the Kusile and Kriel power stations.
Stage 6 rotational load shedding means that 6,000MW needs to be shed from the already deteriorating national grid, leading to at least six hours of power cuts in two-hour or four-hour cycles in a 24-hour period.
The South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Sacci) said on Monday that it was seeking answers from President Cyril Ramaphosa and his Cabinet ministers about the true state of Eskom.
Ramaphosa reportedly cut his trip to the US short after attending the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II to return home and address Eskom’s challenges.
Sacci president Advocate Mtho Xulu said that consumers were sitting on the sidelines and were none the wiser as to where Eskom challenges lie, who was responsible for the turnaround of Eskom and what consequences lay ahead.
“Our call as the Sacci is that the starting point is that we have to have a greater sense of transparency about the real state of Eskom,” Xulu said.
“Sometimes we are expected to come up with solutions and we talk about private generation, but if the president flies into the country tonight, the immediate thing for us is to get greater transparency and accountability on where we are on the turnaround, where are challenges, what is the cost of this, and what we need to do to fix them.”
Xulu said that smaller businesses with smaller budgets and no alternative sources of power were likely to fold and not survive a prolonged period of severe load shedding.
On Sunday, Eskom warned that it could implement higher stages of load shedding at short notice should any further breakdowns occur.
The power utility currently has 5,411MW on planned outage and lost 16,326MW to breakdowns and it reduced load shedding to Stage 5 at midnight on Monday after returning a unit each at Camden, Kriel, Kusile and Kendal.
Eskom also launched a power purchase programme on Monday to secure 1,000MW to bolster constrained generation capacity as part of the broad measures to address the load shedding crisis.
The Standard Offer Programme will procure power from companies who have existing generation capacity for a period of three years, and the Emergency Generator Programme will procure more expensive power during periods when the grid is significantly constrained.
The Bilateral Power Import Programme will secure imports of power from neighbouring countries.
Eskom said the aim was to sign the first power supply agreement during the course of this week, and for the power to start flowing through the grid as soon as possible.
However, independent energy analyst Lungile Mashele remained unconvinced about Eskom’s damage control measures after Ramaphosa’s emergency energy plan was announced two months ago.
“Buying from other private players or other countries will take three months on average from when they were announced. Just because we are in an emergency, it doesn’t mean we should flout rules,” Mashele said.
“This process needs to be as transparent as the IPP (independent power producers) process so it can be interrogated fully.”
Meanwhile, the mining industry, through the Minerals Council South Africa, has urged for faster inclusion of private electricity suppliers in the grid in a bid to resolve the crisis.
Minerals Council chief executive Rodger Baxter said on Monday that the industry had 6,500MW of embedded energy projects in the pipeline, which would ease demand pressures on Eskom.
“It is critical we get stabilisation in the existing network while we in the private sector do what is necessary to get investment into the next stage of South Africa’s energy chapter by developing alternative additional sources of electricity in the form of renewable energy,” Baxter said.
“We know load shedding will be a risk for the next two years, but we must continue to bring supplemental supply from the private sector on stream as quickly as possible.”
– BUSINESS REPORT
