The real reasons why South Africans are experiencing power blackouts are the delay in the completion of the Medupi and Kusile power stations, and the poor state of Eskom’s local power distribution network.

Speaking at the recent MyBroadband Cloud and Hosting Conference, Yelland said load shedding is just one of the causes of power outages.

He said none of the usual excuses for electricity blackouts – like bad weather, deferred generation maintenance, and Eskom’s financial crisis – address the underlying problems.

The real problems are the delay in the Medupi and Kusile power stations (4,800MW each), and the inadequate investment in distribution maintenance and refurbishment.

He said the Medupi and Kusile power stations should have provided nearly 10,000MW of electricity by 2014.

“It is now 2015 and the first unit from Medupi has been synchronised, but it has not been handed over for commercial use yet,” he said. “We are 12 units behind, and 7 years late on the construction of Medupi and Kusile.”

While load shedding has been the cause of recent power blackouts, before that most electricity outages had nothing to do with load shedding.

“The non-load-shedding outages were caused by aging infrastructure, a lack of distribution network maintenance, cable theft, and overloading the system because of cable theft.”

The real problem for most of these issues, said Yelland, is the inadequate investment in distribution maintenance and refurbishment.

Yelland illustrated the dismal state of Eskom’s local distribution infrastructure through the photos posted below.

Eskom distribution board in Hurlingham

An Eskom distribution board in Hurlingham, Johannesburg in a derelict state.

City Power switch gear cubicle

A City Power 11KV switch gear cubicle on the side of Beyers Naude Drive is strapped together with band-it.

“I saw this broken cubicle for four months, and I was reporting it for all four months. After three months they put the band-it around it. Before that the doors were lying in the veld,” said Yelland.

Eskom distribution box in Sandton

An Eskom distribution box in Sandton clearly shows the poor state of local electricity infrastructure.

City Power mini sub-station

A City Power mini sub-station outside of Yelland’s house in Craighall also shows the lack of maintenance on local infrastructure.

Eskom distribution board in Sandton

An Eskom distribution board in Sandton which leaves a lot to be desired.

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