After the Bell: The electricity pricing farce continues, but something’s about to give

When I lie in bed during one of those Gauteng thunderstorms, I can often hear creaking in the ceiling. You know the scene: the lightning is flashing, the buckets are filling and the cats and dogs are raining. 

In those moments my wife almost always believes the entire roof has been blown off and we are about to die. 

For some reason, my usual reply – a grunt – is not considered acceptable.

But I can hear something else creaking – it’s one of our systems, which I think is about to crack, big time.

I’m sure you’ve noticed how our electricity tariff system, literally all of it, just doesn’t work. There is a the hollow ritual in which the regulator, Nersa, holds public hearings and makes a decision, before Eskom goes to court, beats Nersa and gets what it really needs to keep things going.

Of course, Nersa has messed it up so much that Eskom’s victories are piling up. And that bill is being piled on you.

Read more: Consumers to bear the brunt as Nersa bungles push up Eskom tariffs 

As Business Leadership SA CEO Busisiwe Mavuso put it quite nicely a couple of weeks ago, this has the “farcical effect of allowing Eskom to charge tomorrow’s customers for yesterday’s costs”.

I have no evidence for this at all, but this has happened so often that I wonder whether someone will claim one day that Nersa has been giving in to pressure from some politician somewhere. Why does it always get it wrong?

It’s either that or its people are just so incompetent that they cannot do their jobs.

Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has said the government wants to change the entire system. Basically, they need a new system to work out what you should pay for power.

I know you deserve a lot better than you have been getting from Eskom, Nersa, City Power and all of the others over the years. But I think you know better than to get your hopes up.

Ramokgopa is going to kick this all off with a period of public consultation next year, but all there is to say, really, is that we can’t pay more for electricity, and in fact we are already paying too much. That is a simple fact that even Ramokgopa gets. The minister himself has said electricity is unaffordable.

Some unions have suggested that many people are going back to burning wood in their gardens to heat water because electricity is simply too expensive. Imagine that – growing up with electricity, having electricity, but not being able to use it simply because you can’t afford it.

I’m sure there are going to be all sorts of grand promises and claims and gestures over the next few months about power prices. We do, after all, have an election soon. But in the end you, and I, and Ramokgopa cannot get around one simple fact: Eskom needs more money than we can afford.

Nothing about process and consultation and democracy and thunderstorms is going to fix that. The only way we can really sort out Eskom is radically increase its tariffs for those who can pay, or to get the taxpayer to carry the can. As it happens, it’s probably the same group of people. Which means you can either pay for Eskom through tax or through the tariff.

In the meantime Eskom seems determined to do everything it can to lose friends and its ability to influence people. It still insists on the ridiculous requirement of some kind of “registration fee” for your solar installation. It clearly feels that it’s being magnanimous in suspending that fee for a period.

And then, all of the roleplayers involved, including Eskom and, somehow, the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS), still want you to pay about R20,000 for an engineer to sign off on the safety of your installation.

All people are going to do is cut themselves off from the grid, invest more in solar and get an old-fashioned diesel generator for those three wet weeks in February.

Now, having watched all of the people in our power sector over the years, I’m sure Eskom will spout some nonsense about the law and the SABS and how their hands are tied. I don’t care. They’re the ones charging the fee. And they’re the ones who will lose out the most.

Which means they should sort this out ASAP.

Eskom is also taking Nersa to court over its decision to license five companies as energy traders. That’s an entire decade after the regulator issued its first trading licence.

Read more: Eskom’s court challenge to electricity trading licences is a dangerous reactionary strike against reform

So much of this is about yesterday’s battles. In the end everyone who can afford it will get solar. Electricity trading will bring down prices.

And yet, here we are, as always, stuck somehow in the 20th century.

I can hear the creaking. And this time it’s going to require more than a grunt in response. I think something is about to crack. DM