South Africa’s Electricity Collapse Continues as “New” Power Stations Crumble

Chronic incompetence, affirmative action, poor maintenance and Third World chaos have plunged South Africa into yet another power supply nightmare with nationwide blackouts—euphemistically called “load-shedding”—while new video from a recently built power station show that it is on the verge of a dangerous collapse.

The Medupi Power Station—a coal-fired generating station commissioned by the ANC government in 2015—was revealed to be in a “highly dangerous” state with ash and high-explosive coal dust debris pouring out of leaking pipes and covering the surrounding ground like snow.

Footage smuggled out of the Medupi power station by a white visitor, and leaked on social media, showed the full extent of the collapsing infrastructure.

The fact that the power station in question is less than three years old, is testimony to the fact there has been absolutely no maintenance since its first day of operation.

A recent article in South Africa’s Business Day newspaper confirmed that “Eskom’s mega power stations Medupi and Kusile, which were intended to alleviate SA’s power constraints, have a multitude of serious design and technical flaws that are impeding their operation.

“The poor performance of the new power stations is a decisive reason why Eskom is still unable to meet the country’s energy demands despite adding 3,200MW of capacity to the grid since 2015. The utility went into stage four load-shedding mode on Monday, dropping 4,000MW from the grid, the largest amount to date that it has needed to shed to keep the grid stable.”

Another article in the Mail and Guardian revealed that the Medupi power station had been rushed because “the African National Congress held a 25% share of the venture and stood to make a profit of close to R1 billion” on the deal.

In 2010, the World Bank agreed to lend South Africa $3.75 billion to assist with several energy projects, with $3.05 billion allocated for completion of the Medupi power station.

South African Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan said in December 2018 that the problem with Medupi was due to “sub-standard” work provided by “some of the contractors.” (Needless to say, as this is a government project, all the “contractors” awarded jobs all had to be black-owned and run companies in terms of the “black economic empowerment” policy).

“Kusile and Medupi’s three units should be giving us 780MW, but they are not – those are serious issues,” Gordhan said, adding that “some contractors” work at the two power stations was falling short of design and quality.

“Somebody is making money out of the doubling of the cost of Medupi,” he added. In 2007, the initial costing for six units came in at R69.1bn. By 2013, it had risen to an estimated R105bn. In 2016, it rose to R135bn. The most recent estimate is R145bn.

“We have to find out who are the beneficiaries of the doubling of the cost,” said Gordhan.

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