Delusions of grandeur jolt Eskom punters
'Unrealistic' planning forces big users to take business offshore
State capture and corruption at Eskom are not the only threats the power utility poses to energy security in South Africa, says Energy Intensive Users Group (EIUG) chairman Tsakani Mthombeni.Of greater concern is its commitment to costly mega-build projects without proper and transparent demand planning and forecasting. Its assumptions about future electricity demand are dangerously out of date and unrealistic, he says.When the demand Eskom has projected does not materialise it will go into a "downward spiral" of ever-higher tariff increases to pay for and maintain its assets, fewer customers and even less demand for those assets, until there will be no users left to sustain any level of tariff increases at all.This will have devastating consequences for the utility and the country's energy security. "This is what concerns us, because from where we sit this is how the future looks," says Mthombeni. "This is the path we are on. And it is a very dangerous path for the future of the en...
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