Business for the times

Generating wealth by ‘taking out the waste’

Mostly grey water in closed circuit used for reprocessing

60MW PV plant in the pipeline to significantly shrink carbon-footprint Land rehabilitated and environment restored

No new minewaste created

Social capital focused through poverty alleviation, youth education and improved quality of life

According to Eskom’s generation capacity assessment, infrastructure upgrades, such as the erection of transmission lines and substations, will amount to R180bn. This includes 2,600km of transmission lines by the 2026 financial year, and 5,800km of transmission infrastructure by the 2031 financial year.

Errol Smart, CEO of Orion Minerals, believes big users of electricity will eventually have to build longer transmission lines for themselves to be able to connect to Eskom. “We need large generation facilities, and this will require building new transmission lines, but more importantly, maintaining existing lines. The existing infrastructure hasn’t been maintained and it’s starting to fail. Unless there’s an urgent move to start doing maintenance on the trunk grids, we will have problems with transmission.”

As more generation capacity from private power players is added, Eskom’s role as the national power regulator will diminish, according to Moody’s. This will eventually give rise to an independent electricity trading market, which could happen as soon the end of the year – a view Mulder shares.