What a load of shed - debate rages over Eskom monopoly
Roll out rooftop solar panels and empower communities to establish their own micro-electricity grids.
This proposal from Wildlife and Environment Society Algoa Bay branch chair Gary Koekemoer was one of half a dozen solutions that emerged on Monday as the monster of load-shedding – with an estimated cost to the national economy of between R20bn and R80bn a month – gripped Nelson Mandela Bay and the rest of the country.
Koekemoer said SA needed to increase investment in renewable energy.
“In this region of the Eastern Cape alone, we have 16 wind farms,” he said.
“The power goes to the national grid but already there is more than enough there to power a whole city.
“It shows the potential.
“If we increase investment in renewables and integrate it with a community power strategy, we can overcome loadshedding.”
SA had to find a way to supply electricity without killing the planet and poisoning local communities, Koekemoer said.
“Coal is doing both those things through climate change and air pollution, and is also questionable economically because we are not factoring in the hidden costs of the coal industry to community health, to our environment and to our roads from the coal trucks.”
Parallel to the push for renewables, the government needed to free up citizens to help themselves, he said.
“The present scenario will see the rich defecting from the grid after installing their own power-generation devices. “But what about the poor? “At the moment, they are compelled to steal electricity.
“The government needs to roll out solar panels in poor areas on the roofs of homes and schools, for example, and empower communities to link up and supply their own power through micro-grids.
“It’s an easy, quick no-brainer, and the question is why is the government not taking it up?”
While people could zero-rate their electricity consumption through home innovations, legislation was needed to allow them to generate surplus power for sale to the grid.
Draft legislation in this regard had been sitting with the government for several years, and it had to be finalised and implemented, Koekemoer said.
The third part of the solution was to scrutinise the management of Eskom, which would likely mean cutting down the number of staff.
The stated concern of the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) about this issue made no sense, he said.
“We have to consider all the jobs that will come from the efficient delivery of electricity rather than only the jobs created at source in a badly run utility.”
Free Market Foundation researcher Chris Hattingh said competition and decentralisation were the keys that would unlock the load-shedding mess.
The Mozambique cyclone which Eskom was blaming for the latest outages could not have been foreseen, but if there had been at least one other utility with its own infrastructure, load-shedding might have been avoided, he said.
SA’s history of apartheid had to be taken into account and, while it had functioned efficiently then, the huge upswing in mechanisation and high-energy-use industry since the advent of democracy had multiplied the pressure on the utility.
“However, the common denominators among countries with successful electricity supply models are competition and transparency so taxpayers can see where their tax money is going to,” Hattingh said.
South Africans had a natural gift for innovation and the hope was that a homegrown way would be found soon to reduce the price of renewables.
“Until then, we should probably use what resources are available to us, but it must be done on an open, competitive field.
“The bigger government and state utilities are, the more chance for corruption – so competition and decentralisation are the key words.”
On Numsa’s concern about jobs being lost at Eskom if the country’s power monopoly was split, he said the failing utility was already leaking jobs and more would open up as competitors appeared.
South African Institute of Race Relations analyst Terence Corrigan said load-shedding was of huge concern.
“In 2008, when the first phase of blackouts hit us, the general mood of South Africans changed for the first time since the advent of democracy to despondency, and it has never recovered.
“Besides the difficulties caused for ordinary people, talking to business people today the message is clear – loadshedding is a killer.”
While state-owned utilities could generate electricity, efficiency, reliability and cost-effectiveness needed to be embedded as the bottom line.
“We need good board oversight and proper management, and to get rid of affirmative action and Black Economic Empowerment, which effectively ramps up costs.
“We need our utility to focus not on creating jobs but rather on its core business of generating and distributing electricity.”
Until these measures were implemented, complete or partial privatisation would not likely succeed, he said.
“Privatisation should be part of the conversation but even if there was a buyer, how much would they be able to slash the staff budget, if that was necessary?
“Would they be exempt from BEE?”
High Energy User Group spokesperson David Mertens said the industrial areas in Nelson Mandela Bay had not been affected by load-shedding.
“The industrial areas are only load-shedded when it is Stage Five.
“It has not affected us in our factories, but it remains a big problem for smaller businesses in other areas which do get load-shedded, such as in Newton Park,” Mertens said.
“It’s something that is completely unacceptable.
“Eskom has spent a lot of money on new power stations.
“The prices went up and they have nothing to show for it. It’s a total failure.”
Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber CEO Nomkhita Mona said the chamber was conducting research into the dire effects of load-shedding on local businesses. “The level of load-shedding we are currently experiencing could cripple businesses and the larger economy if it is allowed to continue,” she said.
Mona said there had been no transparency from Eskom around what had caused such a significant and sudden lack of capacity – or why it was taking so long to find a remedy.
Numsa spokesperson Phakamile Hlubi said the union believed that load-shedding was a deliberate ploy by the ANC.
“The ANC wants to create and deepen the crisis at Eskom and has gone out of its way to hire a team of incompetent officials to run this state-owned enterprise into the ground so that it can justify its privatisation and selling it off to the private sector.
“It doesn’t care that electricity prices are already unaffordable and by privatising Eskom it would make it even more unaffordable.
“The ANC is deliberately destroying Eskom after it looted and destroyed Eskom through corruption and through the appointment of incompetent cronies.”
Workers would pay through massive job losses, she said.
The union has been vocal in its objection to independent power producers, saying that they contributed to the high tariffs that electricity consumers would be paying from April 1.
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