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ANC's decision to bury electricity bill disturbing - expert

Cape Town - The ANC’s decision to bury the independent system market operator (Ismo) bill that would have transformed the electricity sector was “very disturbing”, according to an energy expert.

EE Publishers MD Chris Yelland told Fin24 on Monday that President Jacob Zuma said four years ago at his state of the nation address that this bill was critical for the power supply of South Africa.

“He repeated the same message at the state of the nation last year,” he said. “Now we hear that it has been buried because they have decided in their wisdom that Eskom should remain in a vertically integrated monopoly.”

Business Day reported on Monday that the ANC decided at its annual lekgotla last week to sink the bill.

“The decision to sink the Independent System Market Operator Bill is in keeping with a decision a year ago to withdraw it from Parliament,” Business Day reported. “No explanation was given at the time, but in his state of the nation speech last June, President Jacob Zuma said the bill would be reintroduced to Parliament.”

Ideological war over Eskom

“They see that the introduction of the bill would be a precursor to the unbundling of Eskom, separating it into a generation, transmission and distribution unit,” Yelland said.

“Ideologically, it seems that is unacceptable [for the ANC],” he said. “So for all the wrong reasons, they are doing the wrong thing.”

“That is inhibiting independent power producers from coming to the table, maintaining a status quo of a vertically integrated monopoly that is serving South Africa very badly at the moment.”

Listen to the full interview with Yelland:


Fin24 reported recently that Lance Greying, a DA MP, believed the government was at an ideological war with itself over whether to keep the current Eskom monopoly over power provision or to allow greater market participation and competition.

Energy Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson said “several concerns were raised regarding the impact on Eskom and the Bill never served before the national assembly”.

READ: Govt at war with itself over Eskom - DA

Yelland said this bill was first mentioned in 1999, but has never been implemented, saying if you leave it to the incumbents, then it never would.

“I think … it stems from the belief that it is not the right time to start unbundling Eskom, when we have a crisis,” he said. “The problem is that it is never the right time … for them to unbundle Eskom. They’re part of the status quo and they resist it. I think that we need to start embarking on this restructure sooner rather than later.”

Nuclear deal

Yelland said the new nuclear deal would probably not involve Eskom. “Eskom simply doesn’t have the money to build a nuclear fleet right now,” he said. “Frankly, nor does the government. That’s why they’re looking for vendor finance or for finance from the vendor countries, like Russia.”

“They’ve had this beauty parade with all these other countries to see what they can bring to the table in terms of financing, because frankly, South Africa doesn’t have the financial resources to finance this internally.”

Koeberg fault

Yelland said the fault on Unit 1 at Koeberg Nuclear Power Station comes at an unfortunate time, but said the fact that it was due for planned maintenance was some form of relief.

"Unit 1 of the Koeberg power station is currently out of service due to a technical fault on the main generator transformer at the power station, which resulted in the unit being isolated from the national grid," Eskom said in a statement.

READ: Eskom warns of glitch at Koeberg

“It comes at a very unfortunate time, taking close on a 1000MW off the grid at a time when South Africa is very constrained even before this incident,” he said.

He said that Eskom had warned about a red-alert week, where any unforeseen incidents would push the country into load shedding. “This, I would say, pushes things to the edge,” he said.

Yelland took to Twitter on Monday about the issue of the Ismo Bill:




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