By Bonke Dumisa
Did you know that bringing two engineering graduates from two universities to work together has helped to resolve the load-shedding problem?
I am not saying this because I happen to be a former academic and an alumnus of both the University of Durban-Westville and the University of KwaZulu-Natal; but because it is true that both Dr Kgosientsho Sputla Ramokgopa, the Minister of Electricity, and Mteto Nyathi, the chairperson of Eskom, got their engineering undergraduate degrees in KwaZulu-Natal; Dr Ramokgopa got his undergraduate engineering degree at the erstwhile University of Durban-Westville (UDW), and Mteto Nyathi “iBhele”, as his clan say, got his undergraduate BSc degree at the erstwhile University of Natal.
The two universities merged in 2003 to form the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN).
Eskom strengthened its policy oversight by having more credible suitably qualified people appointed to its board, under the leadership of a seasoned corporate leader Mteto Nyathi, who previously served as the CEO of MTN and Altron. To strengthen the operational side of Eskom, they appointed Dan Marokane as group managing director (CEO). Marokane holds a chemical engineering degree from UCT and an MSc in Petroleum Engineering from London.
Indeed this was a significant departure from having business leaders who were too distracted because of their other focus on matters political or playing to the public gallery.
Just imagine a serious business of these three engineering degree graduates Nyathi, Marokane and Ramokgopa, all with Master’s degrees, when they were doing the SWOT Analysis on everything that had to be dealt with when the key performance target was stopping electricity load shedding?
Let’s examine some of the issues that the three have addressed publicly.
There is a widespread theory Eskom faces a lot of internal corruption, with rampant sabotage of Eskom operations by its own employees and service providers.
Nyathi has assured that such claims are “highly exaggerated”.
He, however, concedes that there are internal corruption issues which are being appropriately dealt with by the Eskom management team, under Marokane.
Nyathi said there has been a focused strengthening of serious disciplinary processes and consequence management at Eskom, which are now bearing fruit.
There was also a widespread theory that Eskom used much diesel on open-cycle gas turbines (OCGT) to supplement generation capacity; which was used mostly to meet electricity demand during peak times.
While not directly denying that this was the case at Eskom in the past, they assert that in achieving 150 days free of load shedding since March this year, this had been achieved without necessarily burning a lot of diesel on OCGT. In fact, to the contrary, they achieved over R6.2 billion reduction in OCGT diesel expenditure.
South Africans are now so accustomed to hearing the Minister of Electricity Ramokgopa saying a lot about the improved Energy Availability Factor (EAF), without necessarily explaining what this EAF is all about.
In short, “the availability factor of a power plant is the amount of time that is able to produce electricity over a certain period, divided by the amount of the time in the period”. Eskom tells us that its EAF has significantly improved from the lower 50s to over 60%.
It is interesting to note that Eskom has actually improved its EAF and electricity supply by simply demarketing itself.
Eskom publicly, openly supports the installation of solar panels by businesses and private households; and for the government to grant appropriate incentives for this. This move to encourage its consumers to rely less on its power generation has significantly contributed to reducing the overall electricity demand on Eskom.
In short, Eskom’s success in being able to achieve over 150 days without load shedding effectively has been achieved by ensuring that there is an appropriate Eskom Board, led by an appropriately qualified and experienced board chairperson; having an appropriately qualified and an experienced CEO; and, who in turn, has to account to an appropriately qualified and experienced political Minister of Electricity and Energy.
They have all ensured that the available internal disciplinary processes and consequence management processes are strictly followed in ensuring that staff members know that there will be serious negative consequences if they cross the line. There is no magic – appropriately qualified and experienced people have just done their jobs without being beholden to any corrupt stakeholders.
* Prof Bonke Dumisa is an independent economic analyst.
** The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media