Getting down to the nitty gritty: Let’s start providing you with answers…

Because our economy is constantly growing, our demand for electricity increases. Eskom monitors this growth and calculates how much electricity is needed to supply the growing demand.

In the 1990s their calculations showed that new power stations would be needed by 2007 to meet our demand and Eskom even identified sites for these stations and schemes. Seems we were heading in the right direction back then…

Unfortunately for us, they weren’t able to implement these plans and this is what’s making everyone so angry.

The government instated the Energy White Paper of 1998 where they encouraged independent power producers (IPP) to enter the market. After nothing happened on this front, they gave Eskom the green light to build new generation capacity in 2004 - which they didn’t do, choosing to rather refurbish old power stations which didn’t solve the problem.

Listen to your mom the next time she says: ‘Don’t procrastinate!’