JEREMY MAGGS: Eskom is to receive an additional 1000 megawatts of gas-fired energy from Mozambique, all part of the Minister of Electricity, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa’s, ongoing plan to add more power to our struggling grid. The additional supply of power, says government, will enable the power utility to reduce load shedding by one stage. Let’s discuss this further now with Hilton Trollip, independent consultant in energy research and a research fellow in the Global Risk Governance Programme.
One thousand megawatts is a stage of load shedding. It would be in a year, the timeframe in which many politicians have said there’d be no load shedding. Anyway, I’ve never said that. So ja, it’ll be welcome in a year, definitely. I think we need a lot more transparency … and also the Mozambican government is meant to be democratic, but in the last elections, the European Union, the Commonwealth local election observers said the election was rigged. Then one last comment, I want [to make] just by the way, I want electricity for South Africa, but not under all conditions.
HILTON TROLLIP: As you probably know, Jeremy, we get 2 000MW from Cabora Bassa at quite a good deal. I can’t name the cost, but in the past, I’ve seen it’s competitive. Why we haven’t done it earlier is because earlier on there was no production of gas in this Rovuma area because of the insurrection … I don’t know of any production at the moment, so it might well be speculative.
JEREMY MAGGS: Just one other issue very quickly. There seems to be an improvement to the power utility’s plants per plant performance. We are seeing diminution of load shedding; it seems things are improving. The chairman of Eskom says a change in its management structure has helped improve plant performance. Do you have a view on that?