Acting Eskom CEO Brian Molefe has outlined a range of moves he hopes will alleviate the State-owned power utility’s power supply crisis, including finding an extra 3 000 MW by 2016, which could lead to an end to load-shedding. 

“We need 3 000 MW to do both planned maintenance and deal with breakages without load-shedding. It is my hope that we find the 3 000 MW at least by the end of the year. It will enable us to do maintenance without load-shedding,” he told MPs during a marathon question and answer session on Wednesday.

“The reason we have load-shedding is not because we have a systemic or structural problem. South Africa has sufficient electricity to meet demand. But if we do not do maintenance, we will lose the capacity we have over time. We have a backlog and have to catch up. That’s the reality,” Molefe said.

While Public Enterprises Minister Lynn Brown recently said South Africans would have to face at least two years of load-shedding, Molefe said he was more bullish, and was looking at a timeframe of a year, or even shorter. 

Molefe and his executive team outlined steps to bring on the extra 3 000 MW he said the country needs.

This included bringing in 56 MW from the Kariba dam, in Zambia, tapping into renewable energy, such as wind and solar power, and bringing in energy supply on power barges – floating vessels fired by gas, diesel and fuel oil. Ghana was one of the countries where this was being done.

Acting group executive for commercial and technology Edwin Malebane said he hoped a combination of the three options would bring about the introduction of 4 800 MW within two years.

MPs from Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Public Enterprises fired questions at Molefe, with the IFP accusing Eskom of ‘throwing money into a bottomless pit’ and the DA charging that Eskom was “holding the country to ransom and was single-handedly killing our economy”.

But Molefe called on South Africans to be patient. 

“Let us not beat Eskom into a pulp,” he said, noting that South Africans had electricity 96% of the time during Stage 3 load-shedding and that a typical family did not have electricity for ten hours out of the 168 hours in a week during this stage. 

Molefe told a media conference in Cape Town later that he understood the frustrations of industry, in particular, and had some sympathy with ordinary South Africans.

“South Africans are justified in being irritated. I know because I worked on the forty-ninth floor of the Carlton Centre, in Johannesburg [Transnet’s head offices], and it was frightening when the electricity went off. But we have problems that are solvable. It is possible to resolve the issues at Eskom,” he told journalists.

Eskom was planning a ‘Maintenance Festival’ over this coming long weekend to do a flurry of maintenance.

Molefe, the Transnet CEO who had just taken over the hot seat as acting CEO of Eskom, said he would await the outcome of investigations and negotiations on the suspension of the Eskom CEO and several members of the executive committee before considering a permanent appointment.