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Cape Town - Power utility Eskom lost up to 5 850 gigawatt hours of electricity due to illegal connections in the 2008/09 financial year, a government minister said on Tuesday.
Eskom is struggling to fund a multi-billion dollar power generation drive to meet ballooning energy demand in Africa's largest economy, where chronic shortages have put the national grid under severe pressure and hit the key mining sector.
"The assumption is that this figure includes 33.3% to 50% of non-technical losses in the form of theft. That implies theft losses range from 4 100 GWh to 5 850 GWh," Energy Minister Dipuo Peters said in written response to a parliamentary question.
She said Eskom's sales last year amounted to 214 850 GWh, with total losses of 11 706 GWh. These losses included theft, as well as the normal losses associated with the transmission and distribution of electricity.
A gigawatt is equal to one thousand megawatts and Eskom itself reckons this amount could probably light 500 000 South African homes at any given time.
Poor households are entitled to a basic supply of free electricity, yet illegal power connections are commonplace in South Africa's vast shantytowns, which raises the risk of electrocution.
Peters said electricity theft was a "serious problem" as Eskom struggled to find an estimated R461bn for an ambitious generation programme.
She said assuming that most of the losses took place among residential customers, who bought electricity at an average of 62c per KWh, then the financial implications ranged from R2.5bn to R3.6bn a year.
"With Eskom and municipal supplies combined, and taking into account the impact of free basic electricity, the financial value amounts to R4.4bn of lost revenue due to electricity theft," Peters said.
- Reuters
