South African power supply stable: company

JOHANNESBURG – South Africa’s state power utility Eskom said on Friday that the country’s energy supply was stabilising, one year after crippling blackouts that hobbled the crucial mining industry.

‘Last year was a challenging time for Eskom … we have pulled through but we are not yet out of the woods,’ said Eskom chief executive Jacob Maroga.
He said putting old stations back on line and an energy-saving scheme had helped boost capacity in the last six months.
‘The kind of disruptions we had is something this country must not see again,’ Maroga told reporters, adding that there had been no load shedding since April 2008. The country was hit early last year by rolling power cuts as Eskom failed to meet increasing demand for electricity.
Eskom is currently building a 4 800 megawatt coal-powered power plant to boost its capacity.
The first phase of the plant is expected to be operational in 2012 and would be the fourth-largest coal power station in the world.
‘The current global financial crisis has put pressure on access to capital, the markets are tight,’ Maroga noted.
In November last year, Eskom signed a UD$500 million loan with the African Development Bank (ADB) to aid its expansion programme.
The company says it plans to increase its capacity to 80 000 megawatts by 2026 from the current 43 000 megawatts.
Maroga added that the firm was not entirely abandoning its plans to invest in a second nuclear plant as announced in December.
‘We have not entirely dropped our nuclear plans … the issue is about timing and the process of getting it through,’ Maroga said. – Nampa-AFP