As I sat down to write this piece on January 23, it was 37 days before a hundredth birthday. Want to venture a guess as to whose birthday it will be? A hint: quite ironically, you will need to light a candle – not only in celebration, but as a collective effort, for, according to President Cyril Ramaphosa: “There is only one way to end loadshedding: Together.”

As you may have guessed, the Elektrisiteits-voorsieningskommissie (EVKOM), better known as Eskom, will be celebrating its hundredth year of existence, having been founded on March 1, 1923, through the Electricity Act, 1922. How far we have come! Before Eskom was created, there was no electricity, and now . . . well, you don’t need reminding.

While South Africa might be running short on electricity, the powers that be don’t run short on plans. The question is: How long will the powers that be remain in power, despite not being able to generate any power?

Regarding plans, there was Cabinet’s five-point plan, from its 12-page ‘Confronting the Energy Crisis: Actions to End Load Shedding and Achieve Energy Security’ document. The five points are: 1) fix Eskom and improve the availability of existing supply; 2) enable and accelerate private investment in generation capacity; 3) accelerate the procurement of new capacity from renewables, gas and battery storage; 4) unleash businesses and households to invest in rooftop solar; and 5) fundamentally transform the electricity sector to achieve long-term energy security.

Eskom had its own nine-point plan to fix full-load losses and trips, units on long-term forced outages, partial losses and boiler tube leaks, outage duration and slips, human capital issues, and coal stockpiles, as well as prepare for increased open-cycle gas turbine usage, and rain.

Now we have the President’s seven-point plan to end loadshedding, which includes private generation, with the first of over 100 private plants that will be developed to be connected to the grid by the end of this year. The planned projects could produce 9 000 MW, much of it for the companies’ own use. The second point entails emergency legislation to facilitate the faster approval and development of power plants. Third, contracts have been signed for the construction of Renewable Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme projects that will produce 2 800 MW. Fourth, 1 000 MW may be imported this year from neighbouring countries, and Eskom will buy 1 000 MW of excess energy from private producers that already have facilities. Fifth, attention will be focused on Eskom’s six best-performing coal-fired power stations to get them to perform more reliably. Sixth, work on incomplete plants will be finalised and maintenance of other major units undertaken. Finally, the time to complete regulatory processes for new plants has been reduced.

As far as plans go, you might not want to be reminded of The Presidency’s release of January 23, titled ‘National Energy Crisis Committee Releases Six-month Progress Update on Implementation of the Energy Action Plan’, which states: “Six months ago I (the President) announced a national Energy Action Plan to improve the performance of Eskom’s power stations and add new generation capacity as quickly as possible. This plan was the result of extensive consultation and was endorsed by energy experts as the most realistic path towards ending loadshedding.” The President added: “As we know only too well from the experience of the last few weeks, many of the measures in the plan will not be felt in the immediate term.” But when, then?

The bad news from January 23, in the President’s words: “While we cannot end loadshedding immediately, what is certain is that if we work together with urgency to implement the Energy Action Plan, loadshedding will steadily become less and less severe.”