Eskom has been caught with its pants down, says Peter Prozesky, the former head of Koeberg nuclear power station.
Prozesky, who left Koeberg eight months ago and now runs four nuclear power plants in the United Kingdom for British Energy, spoke to the Cape Times this week about the blackouts that have crippled commerce, industry and agriculture and cost the Western Cape's economy many hundreds of millions of rand.
"They've been caught with their pants down. Demand has outstripped supply in the Western Cape and when both of Koeberg's reactors are off, there is no way of getting extra power to the Western Cape because the transmission lines are not capable of managing the extra load," Prozesky said.
"There was a lot of concern about this over the last two years that I was there. Eskom has a lot of catching up to do."
The blackouts were not because of anything wrong with Koeberg, he says, but because the government had not invested in the country's power supply.
Eskom has not built a power station in more than 20 years, nor had it invested in upgrading the transmission lines.
The ageing transmission lines from Mpumalanga, where almost all the country's electricity is generated, cannot cope with extra load, so when Koeberg is out of action, there is no way to get enough power down to the Cape, 1 500km away.
This, coupled with the huge growth in the Western Cape and its accompanying increase in demand for electricity, were the root of the problem, Prozesky said.
"As the electricity demand has grown, Eskom has not been able to convince the government to spend money on building new power stations in the south.
"To solve the Cape's power problem, Eskom will either have to put in much stronger transmission lines from Mpumalanga or they will have to build power generating capacity in the Western Cape. It is an investment issue. It will have to be done, because you can never guarantee that Koeberg's two units won't be off at the same time," Prozesky said.
The two gas-fired power stations being built at Atlantis and Mossel Bay won't solve the problem, he says. They are small and expensive to run, and will be used only to supplement peak demand, as the Palmiet pumped storage scheme is used.
The Cape has actually lost generating power, as the power station at Hex River and the one in Athlone have been shut down.
"South Africa has lost its engineering capacity to build big power stations. On the coal side we were quite self-sufficient, but there has been no work for this sector for 20 years and the contractors have moved on," he said.
Although Eskom plans to bring "mothballed" power stations back into operation, it won't help the Western Cape as they are in Mpumalanga, and the transmitting problem remains.