Cape Town — Minister of Public Enterprises, Pravin Gordhan, has revealed that troubled power utility, Eskom, has spent billions of rands on diesel in the last five years in an effort to keep the lights on.
Gordhan said that Eskom spent R64.8 billion on diesel between the 2019/20 and 2023/24 financial years, with the last two financial years making up nearly 70% of the total figure.
For the 2019/20 financial year, Eskom spent R5.8 billion, with R5.76 billion spent in 2020/21. In the 2021/2022 financial year, the power utility spent R8.6 billion on diesel as load shedding continued to plague the country, IOL reported.
In the 2022/23 financial year, expenditure more than doubled as Eskom allocated R21.25 billion for diesel, and it increased further as it spent R23.38 billion in the 2023/24 financial year.
Eskom has now gone more than 25 days without load shedding as many opposition parties believe it is a ploy ahead of the general elections on 29 May. However, Minister of Electricity, Kgotsientsho Ramokgopa, has denied this and said work has been done to lead to more energy security.
He said more funds would be needed to expand transmission lines, with an estimated R390 billion needed in the next decade.
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According to BusinessTech, Ramokgopa said South Africans should appreciate what Eskom has managed to achieve, but warned that in the nature of the space that Eskom operates, there will be setbacks as there is still a lot of instability.
“We are still working on the reliability of these machines, and that’s why you can’t confidently say load-shedding is behind us. That would be a false claim, and it can’t be substantiated.”
Energy expert Chris Yelland agreed with this sentiment and added that intermittent load-shedding will continue until the utility’s long-term problems are resolved.
He explained that the improved performance is due to the re-introduction of three units at Kusile power station to the grid through a bypass of the flue-gas desulphurisation plant.
He added that the bypass is only a temporary solution, and Eskom will have to take Kusile’s units offline again to implement a long-term solution.
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Compiled by Matthew Petersen
