LETTER: Eskom outages: future lies in regional grid
The Southern African Power Pool offers an important route towards addressing SA’s load-shedding
Your obituary on Ian McRae was both moving and informative (“Ian McRae, the founding father of electricity for all (https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/national/2020-07-13-obituary-ian-mcrae-the-founding-father-of-electricity-for-all/)”, July 14). Unfortunately, the media seldom runs features on the Southern African Power Pool, which links nine national power grids. But if we were not already importing electricity from Inga 2 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Cahora Bassa in Mozambique, we would have far more power cuts, far more severely.
The power pool means if even one state among its nine members generates surplus power, it can be sold and exported to other economies in need. The growing installation of new solar and gas power stations will accelerate the return of such an era. Once this time of budgetary constraints for both SA and Eskom has passed, we need high priority to augment the power pool capacity to wheel in and out electricity, and to link the poo...
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