Blackouts on the cards, Eskom says

JOHANNESBURG – South Africa will have a power surplus during this year’s soccer World Cup but supply will be ‘extremely tight’ from 2013 to 2014 and the country will have to save energy to avoid blackouts, utility Eskom said.

Brian Dames, the chief officer for generation business at state-owned Eskom told a parliamentary committee on Tuesday that electricity supply would be under pressure in the years after the tournament, Sapa reported.’The power supply is going to be extremely tight from 2013 and 2014 until we have baseload power stations coming in,’ he said. ‘It is very important that as a country we work together to prevent any type of power interruptions.’Dames said power saving was crucial to avoid any enforced power cuts in the future, similar to power blackouts that brought the vital mining industry in Africa’s biggest economy to a standstill for days in early 2008.The utility, which provides 95 per cent of the country’s power, has suffered from a lack of investment in new capacity and ageing power stations as demand soared.Dames said Eskom was ‘playing catch up’ on its infrastructure and would be constrained financially after the country’s power regulator rejected its application for a 35 per cent tariff hike in each of the next three years.The regulator granted Eskom a nominal 24,8 per cent electricity price increase this year, and increases of 25,8 per cent and 25,9 per cent for the following two financial years.Cash-strapped Eskom wanted to raise electricity prices by 35 per cent a year for three years, to help it raise R461 billion to build more plants and avoid the blackouts that crippled the vital mining industry in 2008.Dames said South Africa would not be able to take advantage of any economic upturn if the power supply was not adequate.’We are now playing catch up. We have indicated that we would have a shortfall in our funding. We would have to critically review our expansion programme which is required to meet the country’s needs,’ he said.’If we do not invest in infrastructure, when the economic upturn is there, we will not be able to take part in that.’ – Nampa-Reuters