Cape Town - The National Energy Regulator of SA (Nersa) has refused to allow Eskom to charge consumers for its power buy-back programme, MPs heard on Wednesday.
Briefing Parliament's portfolio committee on energy, Nersa official Thembani Bukula said buy-back agreements with major industrial users had proved counter-productive.
The programme allowed Eskom to buy back power from major users to curb usage when the electricity grid was tight.
"The buy-backs was an amount of R8.9bn that Eskom was putting in the tariff to say then when they want to do maintenance on their plants, they would go to a company and say don't produce what you are producing, we are going to pay you... that is what is not allowed," Bukula said.
Nersa gave various reasons why the programme was "inefficient".
"When companies are not allowed to produce then employees will not earn a salary, the ones who are transporting them will not earn," he said.
"We would give them the whole R8.9bn if they were to improve the productivity of their own system, the efficiency of their own systems, and also improve the viability of their own power plants."
Independent Democrats MP Lance Greyling told the committee Nersa had made the right move, but asked whether this decision would not lead to greater pressure on the power grid.
"I think it's quite an absurd situation at the moment where we are paying companies 87c/kWt hour not to produce. But, clearly we are in crisis at the moment, where the reserve margin is at 1%," Greyling said.
He asked whether Nersa was confident that Eskom could continue to keep the lights on, without having to participate in the buy-back programme.
Bukula said there were alternatives, which were tested in other countries which had similar "power constrictions".
"They speak to the big businesses and one of the things they would do is to say to you is business number one, your week is no longer going to be Monday to Friday... you end on Thursday, you rotate them and keep the load low," said Bukula.