Eskom should sell its power stations

[Temujin]

View attachment 589962

Someone should 'load shed' it

 

[ForceFate]

We need a couple of Nuclear Power Stations (not the Russian ones) on the far West coast.
Must be built WITHOUT tender, by a contractor appointed by a panel of leading scientists in the field.
Let's solve these power problems once and for all.
Coal power is outdated and the filthiest form of power there is.

How? Almost impossible

 

[genetic]

We need a couple of Nuclear Power Stations (not the Russian ones) on the far West coast.
Must be built WITHOUT tender, by a contractor appointed by a panel of leading scientists in the field.

Firstly scientists don't design power stations - engineers do. Secondly leading engineers work for large firms who would submit their proposed designs for their power stations. That's essentially what a tender is. You can't skip the tender process.

The only process that needs to be controlled (and thoroughly vetted) is how the tender process is awarded, based upon the merits of their proposed solution.

 

[system32]

To sell the power stations, they need to split Eskom into Generation, Transmission and Distribution.

Once they split Eskom, they will will find it difficult to sell Medupi or Kusile as the cost overruns make the generation too expensive.

Other generation will just come in with NEW cheaper CCGT or Solar or Wind and make Medupi/Kusile unable to sell any product.

And unions won't allow it.

 

[Creag]

Eskom should consider selling its crown jewels, FirstRand CEO Alan Pullinger says

Two new power plants, Medupi and Kusile, are still unfinished after a decade of construction, and combined, Eskom estimates they've cost R292.5bn.

...

The plants are “shiny new” assets that “you would find private-investor capital for, whether that’s local capital or offshore capital,” said FirstRand CEO Alan Pullinger in an interview at Bloomberg’s office in Johannesburg. “There are big energy investors that would probably look to invest in those assets.”

Selling the plants would be made difficult if a list of conditions were imposed by the government, such as blocking job cuts, added the CEO, who once headed FirstRand’s investment-banking unit Rand Merchant Bank. It may also want to contemplate separating the generation of electricity from transmission to invite independent producers to feed into its grid, he said. The utility would have to fix its capital structure and address its cost base through a restructuring exercise, Pullinger said.
...
Eskom chair Jabu Mabuza has said that asset sales are not an option for the utility, because the “only assets we can sell, no one will buy”.
...
Any asset sales by Eskom would likely be opposed by labour unions, who have publicly stated their opposition to privatisation.

“The only workable solution is to break up Eskom and to sell off certain assets, such as the new mega power plants,” said Darias Jonker, director for Africa at Eurasia Group. “This latter option is particularly politically sensitive, and is thus unlikely to happen.”

Source: https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/n...own-jewels-firstrand-ceo-alan-pullinger-says/

It makes for a nice clickbait headline - especially since it ain't happening.

 

[flippakitten]

They should sell them and then just expropriate them back next year April. "To redress the past" (the past where they totally f-uped Eskom and the rest of the country)