Addressing the Africa Renewables Investment Summit (ARIS), underway here in Cape Town Eskom’s CEO André de Ruyter warned that power cuts can get worse than the suggested load shedding Stages 7 and 8 (more than 12 hours a day for millions of South Africans).
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Addressing the current electricity crisis de Ruyter said “Stage 15 load shedding. I don’t want to know what that looks like,” according to The South African.
The CEO suggested that in order to keep a consistent power supply, the country needs to invest in renewable energy and relax air quality standards.
This can be costly resulting in high electricity tariffs which is a necessary move because coal power stations in use currently do not meet minimum emission standards.
De Ruyter mentioned that Eskom is left with just two options to either spend about R300 billion to retrofit the power stations with equipment to clean their emissions or shut them down.
The worst that could happen is a grid collapse; it would lead to no electricity for weeks.
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