South Africa's electricity crisis continues to be front and centre of everyone's minds. Many people just want an end to the rolling blackouts. eNCA reporter Heidi Giokos had a one-on-one sit-down with Eskom's CEO, Andre De Ruyter about issues facing the power utility. Courtesy of #DStv403
JOHANNESBURG - Eskom CEO, Andre de Ruyter blames government policies for exacerbating blackouts.
De Ruyter says the utility can't build power stations without Energy Department approval.
He says a lot more power needs to be added to the grid to address the energy crisis and added to this he pointed to historic delays in the use of Independent Power Producers.
He said, "load shedding will end when we have substantial new energy added to the grid. Bare in mind that Eskom on its own can't procure its own electricity, we can't go and build new power stations because we are required to apply for a section 34 determination from the Mineral Resources Department and Energy."
"We can't go out and buy electricity from the IPPs on an accelerated basis that is done by the IPP office which reports into the DMRE and there have been a number of delays in those processes."
"Some of it, to be frank, occasioned by my less than illustrious predecessors who caused the IPP programme to be delayed by a number of years. If we had the 4000 odd megawatts that was supposed to be procured by that programme on the grid right now -- different situation. We are dealing with these legacy issues."
"To answer your question we will not see the back of load shedding until we have substantial new capacity added to the grid and I think that question is best addressed to the policy makers."
