That is the reality facing South Africans with winter just around the corner.

This past week experts warned that the serious power failures disrupting Cape Town since November last year will also apply to the rest of the country, and it™s going to become worse.

This is bad news for old age homes, hospitals and other emergency services, not to mention the effect it will have on businesses.

Role players are of the opinion that the electricity crisis is due to Eskom™s gross neglect that can be directly ascribed to helpless preventative maintenance, a lack of long-term planning, bad management and affirmative action and the loss of qualified engineers and technicians.

Where electricity used to be in full supply years ago, South Africa has now reached the point where Eskom™s production abilities cannot meet the increasing demands for electricity during peak hours, especially during the winter. Experts say that Eskom cannot overcome the shortage of electricity in time. Although technicians and engineers warned Eskom™s top management about an energy crisis long ago, Eskom continued expanding its services in such a manner that it cannot supply electricity to satisfy demands.

According to Eskom™s own predictions its peak supply demands would only run out by 2007 and its basic demands by 2010. However, it has been battling to provide power since November last year.

Johannesburgers have been living with between 700 “ 800 outages per annum since the year 2000. A lack of backup power means that whenever something goes wrong at a power station such as has been happening at Koeberg in the Western Cape, millions of homes and businesses are without power. The 800 Megawatt shortage that crippled the Cape last Sunday and Monday could very well be the start of power rationing awaiting South Africans.

No new power stations have been built during the last 15 years and against a conservative economic growth of 3%, an additional 1000 MW should be added to ensure that the country has sufficient power.

œWe have a shortage of electricity because there are no enough power stations. It™s as simple as that, said Mr. Andrew Kenny, an engineer who specialises in energy. According to him, international standards determine that a country should have 15% reserve power, but South Africa has only 5%. Kenny is of the opinion that it is too little to provide in the demand when problems occur at power stations.

œPeople must steel themselves for regular power shortages. Eskom says everything is all right, but it is going to get worse. If we have a bad winter, South Africa is going to be in BIG trouble, he said.

It was confirmed that no long-term planning had been done when Mr. Thulani Gcabashe, Eskom™s CEO announced this past week that œtalks about a second nuclear power station must start immediately.

According to Dr. Christo Viljoen, previous dean of the engineering faculty at Setllenbosch University, and previous member of the old Electricity Council, it is œa shocking admission that planning at Eskom had fallen behind. œThey should have thought about a second power station ten years ago, for that is how long it takes to approve, plan and design such a facility before it can generate electricity.

The National Electricity Regulator (NER) admits that the situation in Johannesburg and Cape Town œsends the red lights flashing, but is of the opinion that it is more a question of bad maintenance and a shortage of qualified personnel.

œOur electricity will only run short by 2008 if we don™t build a new power station before that, Mr. Nhlanhla Cebekhulu, spokesman for NER said.

Last year the NER began auditing eleven of the large power networks in the country and nine are now completed. According to Nhlanhla the preliminary audit indicates huge maintenance problems. œIt is a national crisis. Our power outages have nothing to do with ability “ they can be ascribed to bad maintenance and skills.

During the past fourteen years Eskom has spent nothing on infrastructure or expansion, said Mr. Willie van Wyk of CT Labs, a company that is being contracted by Eskom to measure the quality of its electricity supply. œEskom has been negligent. Besides bad planning it is guilty of insufficient maintenance to power stations and transmission lines.

Mr. Fani Zulu, Eskom™s spokesperson, says at this stage it does not seem that Cape residents are facing a dark winter. He denied that Eskom had neglected maintenance work. œEskom will spend R300-million on maintenance work at Koeberg this year. The nature of our industry requires that we plan from 20 “ 25 years ahead, and we have done that. During the first five years Eskom will spend some R84-billion for extensions and maintenance. Up to R5.7-billion will be spent In the Western Cape alone to improve reliability.

Source: Die Beeld