Faizel Patel, Radio Islam News – 12-02-2019
An energy expert has told Radio Islam that Eskom has lied to South Africans about the severity of the current power crisis plaguing the country.
The power utility has confirmed that stage three load shedding will be implemented from 8am on Tuesday.
This follows the move to stage 4 power cuts on Monday and stage 2 on Sunday after reports of six additional generating units unexpectedly went offline.
Ted Blom says Eskom lied about where its operating problems are at the coal stations blaming the old stations including the revelations at the Nersa hearings which he attended and where it was revealed that the Medupi power station was a total failure while Kusile was a criminal failure.
“Eskom has lied to us. They’ve never taken us into their confidence and told us that this is the real situation. They’ve just been blaming the 35-year-old coal fired power stations in Mpumalanga. For that I hold them to account, its absolute nonsense that they’re playing with our lives and the South African economy.”
Blom says Eskom is relying excessively on diesel generators to keep the lights on.
“We don’t have diesel in the country, we have to import the diesel. Government gave a categorical undertaking in December that there’ll be no more load shedding over the Christmas period and to do that Eskom has been burning the OCGT’s non-stop seven days a week. Now they’ve burnt up all the diesel available to the m in the country.”
Blom says the current power crisis is likely to get worse before it gets better because Eskom can’t take any generating units offline to conduct preventative maintenance as they should be doing.
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