Accountability key to Eskom turnaround, says energy expert

The power utility on Friday confirmed the suspension of the managers in charge of the two power stations pending disciplinary inquiries.

The ailing power utility has had to implement rolling blackouts for most of the week due to supply constraints caused by breakdowns at multiple generation units.

Yellend says Eskom’s leadership is attempting to foster a culture of accountability among its staff members.

"People need to be held accountable. Managers need to understand that they are expected to perform and meet certain targets, but the entire culture needs to change to turn around the utility.”

He believes South Africa will only be able to beat load shedding if politicians make the right decisions.

"I do believe that this utility and our electricity supply industry can be turned around, but it will require hard decisions to be taken, not by Eskom, but at the political level, at the highest level in the country.

I hope the politicians wake up and understand what has to be done and fast.

LISTEN TO CHRIS YELLEND HERE:

"Maintenance is important but we have reached the stage where spending a lot of money on maintenance of old damaged plants has diminishing returns.

“The best that maintenance will do is stabilise the energy availability factor. They are old plants and trying to maintain them is not economically possible. The solutions are going to come from new generation capacity that perform properly like new plants, not what we have at Medupi and Kusile.

"Structural issues are important only if they bring new generation capacity through players outside of Eskom. And to do this they need to create an independent grid company which allows non-discriminatory access to the grid to allow other generators to enter the space."

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