Dear Editor
RE: Why do we allow two smelters to rob SA of electricity?
The reader whose letter you published recently is misinformed.
Firstly, the facts on the apparently favourable smelter tariff deal have been well-ventilated over the years and the numbers quoted are no longer accurate (as their prolific lawyers will no doubt remind you).
The smelters were built originally when Eskom had GW of excess capacity (another unaccountable fiasco!) - at the time, we had "negative load shedding" and needed any additional load we could find and big business wasn't slow to take it up -- creating tons of construction work and employment at the time.
The tariff has been renegotiated back to Megaflex format mainly to remove the embedded derivative component in the original deal - which ended up costing Eskom a fortune when the rand-dollar exchange rate reversed (who saw that coming?)
Secondly, the author of your letter on the smelters seems to be just an apologist for the powerships and misses the point completely - you won't solve load shedding by getting rid of customers. There is already a voluntary load shedding scheme at the smelters to allow peak lopping on Mondays and Tuesdays, etc., - remember potlines will freeze if the current is switched off for 5-6 hours and the smelters will not recover.
The current load shedding issue can and could have been solved years back by proper attention to coal plant design and maintenance, better construction management on the new builds, and quicker response by the governors to the need for cost-effective base load capacity (more gas turbines at Ankerlig and Gourikwa would have solved it). It's all then a leadership issue - hence the latest panic management campaign.
