OPINIONISTA: Budget 2023 unlikely to address load shedding and deliver affordable electricity

Eskom’s failure to generate enough capacity to meet demand has culminated in the worst load shedding crisis in South Africa’s history. It threatens to paralyse the country’s economy to the detriment of everyone, but particularly the poor.

Further, the subsidies for rooftop solar and embedded generation will not result in increased capacity or ensure affordability. The R168-billion and R86-billion for capital and interest payments, respectively, allocated to Eskom over the next three years are limited to investments in transmission and distribution. There are two negative implications to this approach.

A good example is the failure of the Bid Window 5 to meet their targeted generation capacity. Halfway through 2022,Cut-throat competition in BW5 has meant that the majority of the preferred bids are no longer sufficiently profitable. This is because input costs are not falling in tandem with the bidding prices. Consequently, the bidding round has failed to close, further delaying the installation of necessary capacity.

Who’se going to lend to a company losing a billion a month to embedded cartels?

Start with getting soweto to pay their bills, the MPs must pay as well, illegal connections must be eradicated, street lights should be solar... They are on all day in our streets after 2 years of no lights

What a mess

Therein lies the nub of eskom problems...

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