Eskom Power Outrages

Eskom, the company responsible for the electricity in South Africa, has recently changed their executive management structure in an attempt to deal with the power crisis. For the last few years, power cuts have been on an increasing rise, with load shedding being implemented to conserve power.

Jacob Maroga, the head of the power utility at Eskom, reported that changes have indeed been made, not only in management but also in structures to restore supply-side stability. He also confirms that much of the recent system instability relates to more of a supply-side underperformance than a massive demand growth.

Through a combination of load losses, poor coal supply and unplanned outages, up to 25% or more than 10 000 MW of Eskom's capacity has been unavailable. Load shedding rose to unprecedented levels, and a decision was made to cut the power on South African mines.

A recovery team was put into place to prevent a repeat of the load shedding. The recovery team will be lead by the current MD of Systems Operations, Erica Johnson. Eskom has also assigned Brain Dames to take over as MD of a new department, which is made up of Primary Energy and Generation and Enterprise Division.

Part of the recovery plan is to negotiate and buy back power from large industrial consumers. Eskom has placed an executive, Ehud Matha, in charge of this project. Large Industrial consumers have been urged to reduce power consumption.

After rolling power cuts to the South Africa’s mining industry, Eskom has now restored full power. However, during that time the mining industry had losses of over 200 million Rand a day.

Local companies have taken things into their own hands while waiting for Eskom to pull itself together. One of these companies is Aberdare Cables, who have launched products for power distribution to new developments.

Some of their products include a house service connection cable, ABC aerial bundled conductor and low cost cables for long distance electricity connections. The feature of the Airdac is to have a phase conductor safely in the middle of the cable to prevent electricity theft.

Meanwhile, with the shedding and power shortages, business and individuals are making claims against Eskom for damages and loss. To date, the claims are a total of R1 million.

In cases where companies are individuals who have contracts with Eskom, lawyers believe there is ground for suing Eskom. Others who get their power supply from the municipality (who gets it from Eskom) have less chance of winning a case.

People and businesses with contracts could claim for negligence, if there was a direct loss such as appliances getting damaged or food loss. Eskom spokesperson, Andrew Etzinger said all claims would be evaluated on merit.

So far, there hasn’t been one clear solution to how Eskom will be able to restore power, but hopefully with new changes in management, Eskom will be able to brainstorm new ideas. In the meantime South Africans, including companies and citizens, are urged to cut back power usage and go green.