Disaster regulations to solve power crisis ‘nonsensical’
Energy expert Tshepo Kgadima believes the regulations disaster management regulations gazetted by government won’t prevent the electricity grid from collapsing.
Minister of Cooperative Governance Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma on Tuesday gazetted the regulations for the state of disaster on electricity constraints.
The regulations were made public some two weeks after President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the country’s energy crisis would be declared a state of disaster to allow government the means to resolve the problem.
Among the regulations is the ability of government to grant exemptions from load shedding or reducing load shedding schedules to protect essential infrastructure have also been listed.
Essential infrastructure includes health, water, rail, as well as ports and food production and food storage facilities and critical electronic communications and broadcasting infrastructure.
Kgadima says the regulations could spell trouble for the country’s essential services.
“Which inter-connector station are they going to be using? How many megawatts hours will they be importing from the neighboring countries and also at what cost per megawatt hour?
“How will such power be imported and also their belief that they can continue to then justify spending even more money on diesel to generate electricity? It’s an absurdity, but a very dangerous one because for as long as they insist that more intermittent power must be connected to the high voltage grid of Eskom they are going to precipitate the total collapse of the grid.
“So the regulations are nonsensical to say the least.”
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