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January 22, 2007 Edition 1
Editorial
Perhaps one of the most worrying aspects of last week's power cuts is the level to which South Africans have come to expect them.
Shops, factories, banks, farmers and even small businesses have invested in generators so they can function when the lights go out - yet again.
This is sensible, but also disturbing, as it speaks of citizens who have accepted that the authorities can no longer be relied on to provide the foundation on which modern society is built: electricity.
Last week's power failure was the seventh in the past 15 months. The National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) investigated six of the blackouts last year and found Eskom guilty of negligence, poor maintenance, inadequate protection systems and breaching its licence conditions at the nuclear power station at Koeberg.
Last week's blackouts showed us that when some power stations are off line for routine maintenance, problems in any of the others can cause country-wide blackouts.
Eskom, rather ingenuously, explained that there was no spare generating capacity because of the huge increase in the growth of the population and the economy.
Well, that's what countries do, and there should have been provision for this growth. Yet no new power stations have been built in 20 years.
But the real reason for our energy crisis goes deeper than Eskom's incompetence: there is no single entity in charge of the power system.
As research by Stanford University found, when Eskom was restructured, its functions were split up and the job of planning for the overall power system moved to the government.
Eskom, Nersa, Minerals and Energy, and Public Enterprises all play a part in the country's energy system, but responsibilities are not defined, nor is it is not clear who is in charge. And that, as the researchers said, is a very, very dangerous situation for any country to be in.
Certainly, Eskom needs to sort out its operational problems, but we cannot lay blame for lack of generating capacity on Eskom, because it no longer has the job of planning the energy system. The government took that job from it, and has failed miserably to deliver.
It is now vital that Minerals and Energy rectifies this. We are in an energy crisis, and it needs to take charge.
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