South Africans will have to pay more for electricity as Eskom plans to increase prices in the next three years to pay for infrastructure, said company chief executive Thulani Gcabashe.
He was addressing the Johannesburg Press Club on Thursday.
”We expect prices to go up as investments are made in infrastructure,” he said.
In 2007, consumers will have to pay 5,9% more for their electricity and a further 6,2% for the 2008 and 2009 financial year.
This is in line with determinations made by the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa). Nersa determines prices according to the investment needs of the industry and the need for stable and predictable electricity prices.
Some power stations were ”mothballed due to high excess capacity in the late 1980s and 1990s … Eskom therefore plans to bring them back to life to increase capacity”, Gcabashe said.
A R97-billion budget has been set aside for refurbishing mothballed power stations and for building new ones.
This, according to Gcabashe, was sure to meet increasing consumer demand, which was way above Eskom’s predictions.
The new infrastructure would help reduce power failures caused by heavy consumer demand.
Although Gcabashe said Eskom was not expecting any problems in Cape Town — where there was a spate of power cuts during the winter — he said he had no jurisdiction over Johannesburg.
Gcabashe could not comment on Johannesburg outages, because unlike Cape Town, Johannesburg bought electricity in bulk directly from Eskom and distributed it to residents.
This meant that Eskom’s responsibility stopped after distributing electricity to City Power.
Asked about closing coal-fired power stations to make way for more environmentally friendly nuclear ones, he said Eskom was working on reducing carbon dioxide emissions from coal-burning stations.
”Coal is abundant and cheap. We are looking at measures to reduce the carbon dioxide.” — Sapa