The energy department warned that South Africa faces unplanned power outages unless R68 billion was invested in the electricity maintenance infrastructure backlog, the Star reported on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The backlog went from R38b in 2006\/2007 to R68bn according to a study, the department told Parliament on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Energy department acting director general Wolsey Barnard said outages like the one in Johannesburg on Monday, were caused by poor maintenance.<\/p>\n
“If we keep doing the wrong things we are doing, not maintaining infrastructure, we will continue to see the trend,” he was quoted as saying.<\/p>\n
The problem would require fixing of distribution lines, substations and switch gears.<\/p>\n
One metro in Gauteng had 400 outages between July 2013 and June 2014 because of poor maintenance of infrastructure, he said.<\/p>\n
These had nothing to do with Eskom.<\/p>\n
He told journalists on the sidelines that lack of maintenance had been due to lack of money by municipalities — who were not using money on the tariff structure to fix infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Eskom was aware of silo problems since January: union<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Telkom warns over Eskom load shedding<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n