NERSA must reject Eskom price hike application
14 February 2016
Eskom’s application to the National Energy Regulator (NERSA) for an additional price hike of 8.6% comes down to Eskom asking consumers to pay up for the State Owned Company’s poor financial planning and operational inefficiency. Government would do well to give meaning to assertions in today’s reports and allow for the privatisation of our power supply to make Eskom more profitable in the long run.
Eskom is submitting an application for a regulatory clearing account (RCA), which would enable them to hike up energy prices by an additional 8.6% over the 8% annual increase agreed upon for the time window running until March 2018. This would result in additional revenue of R22.6 billion from tariff increases. Meanwhile, the national regulator has paid an excess of R73 million in bonuses to executives and management over the last seven years.
Eskom’s RCA is a mechanism that allows the utility to recover unexpected costs that arise while generating electricity. The costs are recovered from consumers retrospectively by adding them to the next year’s tariffs. The regulator needs to decide that these costs have been incurred prudently and have passed an efficiency test.
At the public hearings on Eskom’s RCA application, the response has been unanimous in its rejection of the application. Objections range from steel and mining interests to local government and the environmental lobby. Representatives and citizens are becoming aware that consumers will ultimately pay for Eskom’s negligence and mismanagement.