THE country is not experiencing a power supply crisis, Eskom said on Monday.
“There is no crisis at Eskom. I think the way Eskom gets reported on creates the perception of a crisis,” CEO Tshediso Matona told reporters in Johannesburg.
Mr Matona said the power utility needed financial stability and additional power to make sure electricity supply was reliable.
He said Eskom sold power cheaply.
“We sell electricity below cost compared to other countries. We have spoken about this before … It is a matter of policy implementation, which we do not do ourselves.”
Eskom did not anticipate implementing its stage-three schedule of rolling blackouts again this month, he said.
“We will probably not go into stage three from this difficult patch, but that will rely on additional power capacity going forward,” Mr Matona said.
Stage one allows for up to 1,000MW of the national load to be shed, stage two for up to 2,000MW and stage three for up to 4,000MW.
Stage-two blackouts went into action on Thursday and stage three on Friday.
Eskom was doing everything possible to manage the outages, Mr Matona said.
“It really pains us to have to load-shed. We know the public is not pleased.”
He said a complete blackout would spell disaster for the country.
“We load-shed out of responsibility … A complete blackout would be catastrophic and can take weeks to recover from.”
Group executive Matshela Koko said he led an investigation into the collapse of the silo at Majuba.
“Majuba is urgent … yes, we had a second crack at Majuba, and we will soon take the public into (our) confidence,” Mr Koko said.
Mr Matona said the blackouts had also affected customers in neighbouring countries.
“There is a perception that we load-shed but continue supplying neighbours with electricity. That is not so, cross-border customers are also affected.”
Mr Matona said electricity supply was expected to be constrained in February and March because of budgetary constraints.
“Our financial director is looking at options in this regard,” he said.
The power supply would depend on the availability of diesel during the period.
Eskom used 140-million litres of diesel to produce power in November.
“We have had situations during this past week where the ordering of diesel was delayed due to budget constraints,” said Mr Matona.
“Sometimes, in terms of logistics, things do not go smoothly between us, PetroSA and other suppliers,” he said.