Eskom needs almost R1 trillion to bring an end to load shedding

Eskom COO Jan Oberholzer says the ailing power utility needs almost R1 trillion to bring an end to load shedding.

He was speaking at the Agri SA Congress in Pretoria, earlier today.

Oberholzer says the utility needs an investment of just below a trillion rand to build more distribution and transmission lines.

He says in addition to this,  nine coal power plants will be retired over the next 15 years due to, what he says, age and environmental challenges.

Meanwhile, the City of Cape Town has somewhat praised itself from protecting customers from either 2 stages of load shedding or no load shedding at all.

Cape Town Mayor, Geordin Hill-Lewis said that the City protected customers from more than 1 100 hours of Eskom's 1 900 hours of load-shedding between February and September this year

‘’ 'While the City is currently protecting customers again from load-shedding in the evenings, I am encouraged to see how much load-shedding relief we have been able to provide this year. We are only able to do this because we ensure our Steenbras plant is properly maintained and that we invest in our energy infrastructure for reliable services.’’

‘’It is important for Capetonians to understand that when the City protects its customers from some of the impacts of load-shedding, it is also to the benefit of all as critical infrastructure and the City's own electricity network are protected so that service delivery can continue. Over time, we will be able to end load-shedding as many of our projects that are currently under way, are implemented,’’ he added.

The City's Mayco Member for Energy, Beverley van Reenen, said residents needs to be aware of planned outages and load shedding.

‘’The non-stop Eskom load-shedding, setting a record of 30 days straight last week, does have impacts on infrastructure. Much of our infrastructure, like household infrastructure, have not been designed to take non-stop load-shedding. This sometimes leads to load-shedding related outages due to the sheer pressure on the network from load-shedding. For instance, where we are able to switch some areas automatically and remotely, sometimes the impact of the non-stop load-shedding means we have to send teams to switch areas on manually which could affect response times. The City continues to enhance contingency measures.’’

 

PICTURE: CoCT

Done By: Mitchum George