Uncontrollable and unpredictable fuel and capital costs were key principals in the proposed 53% electricity tariff increase, Eskom chief executive Jacob Maroga said on Friday.
”The volatility that we see we cannot absorb as a company,” Maroga said at the National Energy Regulator of South Africa’s public hearings in Pretoria.
He said regulatory rules needed to allow for adjustment and changes in fuel and capital costs. The impact of these on the power industry had not been addressed.
He said government support was needed.
”We require a very deep collaborative effort. Fundamentally we are here as the system will be tight for a number of years.”
Eskom was ”working hard” on its capacity expansion programme.
”We are in a deep, deep challenge that is going to take some time to come out of.
”One of the records I don’t want to be proud of is that no CEO has done as much load-shedding in a year as I have done,” he said, eliciting a laugh from people at the hearings.
Eskom non-executive chairperson Valli Moosa said that high-income electricity users were to blame for the current electricity crisis.
He said while subsidisation of Eskom had some role to play to alleviate its financial woes, it had to be asked what the negative effect of that would be.
Moosa said it would mean that higher income earners using the most power would be subsidised.
”Can we afford to subsidise higher income earners in Sandton, Hyde Park and Bishopscourt,” he said.
Users who had to be subsidised were lower income earners.
”Lower income earners are not the ones who got us into this problem. Their power usage is minuscule. The ones who use the most power are higher income earners, commerce and industry.”
Moosa described the electricity supply crisis as ”very real”, saying it was not simply a management problem.
Meanwhile, Eskom said that emergency power cuts will not occur on Friday or on the weekend.
”We have assessed the power-supply situation overnight and don’t anticipate that it will be necessary to institute emergency load-shedding today [Friday],” it said in a statement.
”… And as consumption patterns are typically lower over weekends, we anticipate that we will not implement emergency load-shedding over the weekend.”
The supplier still appealed to the public to continue using power wisely and to reduce consumption wherever possible. — Sapa