It is hard to comprehend that our once successful and world class power utility is now in such a parlous state of diminished competence. The engineering professions have since 1992 warned that, if the government believes in its economic growth projections based on GEAR and ASGISA, then as with any power utility that depends for base load on the 6 pack fossil or two reactor nuclear plant configurations, then start building them without further delay, and to stop kidding themselves that private power interests would want to get involved with investing here on the returns available with the (admirable) historically low unit cost of Eskom’s supply.

Aside from now facing the reality of a major national economic driver failure and the frustrations and anger of business and citizens, Eskom will have to face up to the formidable task of recreating the lost institutional memory and capital in the form of experienced engineering resources to manage both the capital programme and the maintenance of a very stretched system. My own observations and interaction with Eskom, commencing some four years ago on the efforts to provide resource input to the Capital Development Department have been nothing but amazing in the naivety and misplaced belief then that all new Engineers would need to be black females! The affirmative action obsession will come back and bite them big time. Eskom now faces the additional challenge of global demand for good and experienced power engineering resources. In a hysteresis-correcting like manner, they will have to bend back dramatically to reverse their losses, as their mistaken belief that training is going to solve this one should not fool the public. We all know how long it takes to mould a useful, productive, experienced Engineer.

Overall the blame for being politically naïve and failure to heed the advice of experts must lie with the government and the Minister of Public Enterprises. It is hard to believe that those tasked with the responsibility for energy management fell into the realm of unconscious incompetence ie they did not know that they did not know, as the warning bells were loud and clear long ago. I recall Ian Macrae, a past CEO of Eskom, stating "if you stop Eskom growing, you stop the economy growing” How true this is going to be. What must international investors now think about SA as an investment option? Load shedding, rationed power, inadequate skills to recover, the possibility of skills actually depleting further…..and worse, it seems not much convincing light at the end of the tunnel. It is now time that the government and Eskom paid some attention to the significant collective expertise that exists out in the community in the form of retrenched and retired white Engineers who have earned their T shirts in the power industry. Eskom’s current constraint to recover throughput as an active power generating asset will be the supply and retention of skills. It will take some inventive strategy to get that act together but until I see some real serious concern to realize this, then the consumer is going to add desperation to the frustration that power rationing, higher tariffs and unforeseen outages are the future for a long time. Below are some of the statements from the Eskom annual report which I include for a bit of light, masochistic reading:

"Eskom was recognised as a utility of global stature in 2001 when it received the Financial Times award for the Global Power Company of the Year.

Power outages in 2006 and 2007 have brought into sharp focus the vulnerability of the power system. Several factors came into play – higher than expected demand, unplanned outages, and more importantly, a diminishing reserve capacity. In recent years the reserve margin for generation capacity has shrunk to between 8% and 10%. We aspire to a reserve margin of 15%.

As the provider of 95% of South Africa’s electricity, our contribution may be the most fundamental of all in supporting economic growth in South Africa – another reason for the exhilaration and heightened sense of mission that have characterised Eskom’s activities over the past year”.

Missing conclusion: We ran out of power because, together with government, we were not competent or experienced enough to plan and manage the energy system of the country. Our exhilaration may be short lived, as the disillusioned consumer must now pick up the tab for our actions.

Just in case the reader did not notice, this is a word for word repeat of the SA Mechanical Engineer leader article of January 2008. The more they stay the same….