Load shedding costing SA R11bn a month

Load shedding costs South Africa up to R11 billion a month, but it's here until Eskom is back on track.

Load shedding costs South Africa up to R11 billion a month, but it's here until Eskom is back on track.

Published Jul 30, 2015

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Louise Flanagan

JOHANNESBURG: Load shedding costs South Africa up to R11 billion a month, but it’s here until Eskom is back on track.

“It’s important to reduce load shedding because it’s the biggest cost to the economy,” said Rudi Dicks, deputy director-general in the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME).

The “estimated cost is between R8bn and R11bn amonth”. The main costs are the damage to machinery, equipment and labour.

“This does not include the impact on investor confidence and social trust,” he added.

Load shedding costs R9 to R15 a kWh and running diesel-powered stations costs R4 to R5 a kWh, compared to Eskom’s average cost of producing electricity of 67c a kWh.

Dicks was speaking at the SA National Energy Association on Tuesday night in Joburg. DPME is based in the Presidency and Dicks is part of the electricity war room (WR), set up by the cabinet late last year to get Eskom back on track.

The war room links key government departments and Eskom, and makes sure they talk to organised business. Its five-point plan, approved by the cabinet in December, is a strategy of immediate and short-term interventions to manage the electricity supply and demand.

“The WR doesn’t talk about policy. It’s about unblocking problems,” Dicks said.

“It focuses on 20 percent of the issues, which will make up 80 percent of the impact on managing the challenges.”

A key focus has been increasing energy availability.

From 2008 to 2011, about 85 percent of Eskom’s generating power was usually available for use. But this has dropped steadily since then, and by April it fell to below 68 percent.

Dicks said it was gradually improving, to just over 72 percent last month, while the aim is to get it to 78.2 percent in five years. This is a problem linked to power station breakdowns, which results in load shedding.

Top of the war room’s five-point plan is improving Eskom’s maintenance and operational practices.

Majuba power station, which lost a coal silo last year, is expected to be “functional” by November 30 and repairs to Duvha power station are at the negotiation and procurement stage.

The first unit of the new Medupi power station, which is running, is due to come onstream by September 30, while Ingula’s first unit is due by October 31 next year.

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