Eskom chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer has told the farming industry to brace for load shedding over the next 18 months at least and suggested a regular Stage two load shedding regime which the country can plan around.
At a congress of the Agricultural Association of South Africa (AgriSA) held yesterday, Oberholzer said bold steps need to be taken to have stage 2 load shedding as a permanent feature to allow Eskom to take units off for planned maintenance as the utility struggles to maintain power to the detriment of industry including agriculture.
“If we had not done what we have over the last two years it could have been much worse. We need to take bold steps and sustain Stage 2 for a long period to enable proper maintenance. Everybody can arrange their work or lives around that,” he said.
He said the reality was that load shedding was here to stay for the immediate future and that it would take visionary capacity to balance the demands of the country for electricity and respect for the power plants which produced it, which meant regular maintenance needed to be carried out.
He said it would need at least a trillion rands for Eskom to get out of the rut, but would still need to build transmission lines, which was big challenge facing the utility.
Eskom in the next 12 years have to retire nine coal-fired power plants because they have reached their end of life.
“We have run our plants in the red and we are paying for that now. We have to take decisions not just to end load shedding, but think about the future as well. The plants called for maintenance 24 years ago and we did not do that adequately,” he said.
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