Eskom breaks everything it touches

[Kevin Lancaster]

Eskom breaks everything it touches

The only thing Eskom has to do now is connect the greenpower projects to the national grid – but even this is proving to be a hard ask.

 

[P924]

Or read it without paying:

http://www.msn.com/en-za/news/other/editorial-it-should-be-eco-not-ego-for-eskom/ar-BBmALkH

 

[1441568916]

Correction... The cANCer breaks everything it touches.

 

[Milano]

Same government, same woes.

 

[FNfal]

Par for the course .
Just another day and another fark up.
What's new ?
This is ANC destruction, imagine if that genius Juju got hold of the government .

 

[Fuzzbox]

They cant solicit a bribe so therefore they have no will to do the right thing.
Escom thrives in being inefficient.
As soon as efficiency knocks at the door they are not interested.

 

[ToxicBunny]

NERSA need to put Eskom in their place...

They have the money for this, and it needs to be done. No breathers, no breaks....

 

[Pythonista]

Two words : cadre deployment !

 

[adrianx]

I feel sorry for the few Eskom employees that are there on merit (not skin colour/political affiliation).

 

[Iwojima]

I feel sorry for the few Eskom employees that are there on merit (not skin colour/political affiliation).

I work for an Eskom contractor and get to see the internal workings of the organisation in great detail owing to what my line of work entails. I would go as far as to say there are thousands of hard working employees still in the organisation who try their best and would like nothing more than to see it returned to its former glory. I find it sad when these people get lumped into the whole "Eskom is the devil" debate and are too ashamed sometimes to even admit they work for the organisation.

The problem is government influence is far too strong and politically slanted in the structuring, planning/strategy and occasionally the day to day running of various programs. I'm not saying there aren't some lazy/useless elements in Eskom, but their contribution to the overall situation is far less than those in the driving seat at the top who make the other 40-odd thousand employees look bad.

 

[HavocXphere]

Same as all the other parastatals...they stuff them full of ANC cadres at the top & then everything comes crashing down thanks to incompetent leadership and decision paralysis.

 

[Bryn]

So Eskom was given R4bn to connect renewable projects to the grid, and is holding onto the money for entirely unrelated purposes. Can't people sue them for corruption like that?

 

[upup]

So Eskom was given R4bn to connect renewable projects to the grid, and is holding onto the money for entirely unrelated purposes. Can't people sue them for corruption like that?

I did not read the article, some of these green systems [where cancer agents are in control on top ] are so badly build, they cannot be connected to the grid, for safety reasons. A friend of mine got a nice job to get some of these stations up to standard.

 

[adrianx]

I did not read the article, some of these green systems [where cancer agents are in control on top ] are so badly build, they cannot be connected to the grid, for safety reasons. A friend of mine got a nice job to get some of these stations up to standard.

I like to be on the green side because I think it's cool , but what you are saying is very interesting - and very possible.

 

[Voicy]

I work for an Eskom contractor and get to see the internal workings of the organisation in great detail owing to what my line of work entails. I would go as far as to say there are thousands of hard working employees still in the organisation who try their best and would like nothing more than to see it returned to its former glory. I find it sad when these people get lumped into the whole "Eskom is the devil" debate and are too ashamed sometimes to even admit they work for the organisation.

The problem is government influence is far too strong and politically slanted in the structuring, planning/strategy and occasionally the day to day running of various programs. I'm not saying there aren't some lazy/useless elements in Eskom, but their contribution to the overall situation is far less than those in the driving seat at the top who make the other 40-odd thousand employees look bad.

I worked at Eskom before coming here. They have absolute clueless people from varsity earning fat salaries and then they have the old guard who are super dedicated and skilled beyond what I ever could've expected. There are also new bloods in the place who work incredibly hard to uplift themselves and their surroundings. Sadly the company gets rid of them far too easily. When they're all gone the country is screwed. There's even a plant in NZ which is staffed entirely from ex Eskom employees.

My contractor sent my managers a letter after my one project to report an anomaly. Turns out mine was the first project that he has ever been paid within the 30days invoicing time every single month without fail. Its not hard to do yet contractors wait 2yrs for payments. It closed down our consulting firm before I moved go Eskom coz gov owed us over 4 bar. You can't expect your contractor to perform if you don't ensure his cash flow. But it also meant that my contractor was very flexible to help me out when things hit hurdles.

I saw other staff telling contractors who drove 300km to sign invoices to "come back later" because they were on lunch. The mind boggles.

 

[Voicy]

I did not read the article, some of these green systems [where cancer agents are in control on top ] are so badly build, they cannot be connected to the grid, for safety reasons. A friend of mine got a nice job to get some of these stations up to standard.

I like to be on the green side because I think it's cool , but what you are saying is very interesting - and very possible.

The problem with many of these IPPs is that they produce too much power for the locations they're in, which means power has to be exported onto the Eskom transmission grid. This is good, but the IPP funding only covers their own build and connect tion to the closest Eskom line. Whether this line actually has the transfer capacity to handle that load is immaterial to the IPPs.

This puts Eskom in a tight spot. It costs a ,metric crapton to build new lines. They also can't upgrade the existing lines without switching off areas for months at a time. Some work can be done by live line contractors of course but this is insanely expensive and dangerous. So what is the alternative? Organize new servitudes which crosses farms and this causes maaaaaassive issues. Farmers hate Eskom and with due cause, but it leaves the company with little room to work in. Stakeholder management and public participation is key, we all saw what it did to etolls.


So I can see why Eskom won't connect some IPPs.

 

[upup]

The problem with many of these IPPs is that they produce too much power for the locations they're in, which means power has to be exported onto the Eskom transmission grid. This is good, but the IPP funding only covers their own build and connect tion to the closest Eskom line. Whether this line actually has the transfer capacity to handle that load is immaterial to the IPPs.

This puts Eskom in a tight spot. It costs a ,metric crapton to build new lines. They also can't upgrade the existing lines without switching off areas for months at a time. Some work can be done by live line contractors of course but this is insanely expensive and dangerous. So what is the alternative? Organize new servitudes which crosses farms and this causes maaaaaassive issues. Farmers hate Eskom and with due cause, but it leaves the company with little room to work in. Stakeholder management and public participation is key, we all saw what it did to etolls.


So I can see why Eskom won't connect some IPPs.

He is mainly upgrading the protection and sync part.

 

[agentrfr]

I've got a mate who's family company is owed over 6 bar by eishkom for jobs completed over the last 5 years... They had to pay their employees this quarter out of their own pockets. What a joke.

I've also had the opportunity going in to a couple power stations and meeting everyone from the cleaners in the water purification sections all the way up to plant operations control managers - all of them incredibly skilled, highly experienced and awesome at their jobs. The work they do with the budgets they have is nothing short of phenomenal. Also most of them are 50+ years old with very limited new blood coming in (specifically people willing to work/learn from the old guys)... in 20 years we're going to have serious problems.

All of the rot in eskom is upstairs. The men and women running the power stations are doing heroic levels of work. If they could get some blerry engineers to run the "business" we'd be right as rain in 2 years.

IMO one of ANC's blunders has been changing Eskom's mandate from "Supply electricity to the country in a sustainable manner" to "Make as much money as possible"... that's where all of the lack of maintenance issues started.

 

[adrianx]

I agree with the OP 100%

The sad thing about this country is that people still vote ANC/EFF and I don't think that is going to change soon. That's why, as far as I'm concerned, this country is farked.

I have no loyalty towards this country, much like I felt in the Apartheid days.