[LISTEN] ‘At least 5 years to fix Eskom’
Energy expert Ted Blom believes it will take the government at least five years to stabilise Eskom and ensure reliable electricity supply.
South Africans have been hit with another bout of load shedding, with the struggling power utility ramping up the rotational blackouts to stage 4 on Friday.
The embattled state owned entity says it was forced to implement stage 4 due to higher demand and an increase in unavailable capacity.
To make matters worse, the power utility is also experiencing problems with wet coal due to the incessant rain in parts of the country over the past couple of days.
Blom says the lack of maintenance at power stations remains the biggest headache.
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"Essentially what's happening is that Eskom has run down its old fleet hoping that the new fleet would save the day and take over the supply. The problem is the new fleet -Medupi - is only available at 60% availability and Khusile at a shocking 20% availability, so Eskom’s dreams of replacing the old with the new fleet are shattered.”
He says it will take the cash-strapped utility half a decade to get back on its feet.
"It will take Eskom at least 5 years to get right with the broken maintenance project and they'll need money to do that and they don't have the money to do that. On top, it will take them at least five years to recover the coal situation after they've signed new mining supplies.
"This is all within my forecast and I'm not surprised. All I can say to South Africans is: ‘Hang in there guys and get off the grid as soon as possible’.”