The truth on Escom is out

AS USUAL Engineering News, rather than the daily and weekly newspapers (which seem increasingly to be written by children) has produced the best reporting on the energy crisis. Using simple logic and arithmetic, Engineering News has asked why it was possible last winter for lights and heating to continue uninterrupted (when July's demand was a record 36 513 MW), whereas present peak demand is only 33 000 MW. Good question. The answer is not, as everyone (including Spigot) thought, the fault of the Government refusing to sanction enough new power stations in time. No, it's because of "unplanned maintenance and maintenance slippages". No less than 20% of our generation capacity is out of service. About 3 000 MW of capacity is out for planned maintenance, and 5 000 MW is down for unplanned maintenance. To coin a phrase this is the drol in die drinkwater. Putting it another way, the daily shortfall is because Escom could not organise a booze-up in a brewery -- or, clearly, a proper maintenance schedule with built in contingency plans. Spigot recalls that Escom's management inherited massive and well-oiled kit from the previous regime of white males who, whatever their other failings, knew how to plan and look a bit further ahead than their next pay check.