Just when you think Eskom can’t kick you any harder than it currently is, along comes a potential price increase. NERSA, the country’s national energy regulator, will make a call on Eskom’s most recent price increase application this week. The amount at stake? A mighty 32% increase over the current cost per kW.
The price increase has been in the works for some time now, with a subsequent request for an additional 10% increase already in the pipeline.
You happy about this, NERSA?
The agency has published the meeting schedule for its little get-together this week, where it’ll pull the trigger on Eskom’s “fifth Multi-Year Price Determination (MYPD5) revenue application for the 2023/24 and 2024/25 financial years”. That’s a complicated way of saying ‘South Africans will pay up to 32% more for the little electricity Eskom supplies’.
The price increase isn’t done and dusted, of course. The regulator has previously given lower increases than requested, though it’s looking at tweaking the methodology it uses to make these decisions. Eskom, for its part, claims to desperately need the price increase in order to keep operating.
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That’s because South Africa’s municipalities owe it more than R50 billion in outstanding fees. Then there’s the historical mismanagement of the state power supplier, the whole State Capture thing, ongoing sabotage, and various other factors leaving regular South Africans in the dark. But hey, the price of diesel might be falling in the near future. Maybe Eskom can afford to keep those extra generators running for longer.
If you want to find out just how much more expensive your energy bill will become in real-time, you can tune into the meeting from 12:00 to 14:00 on Wednesday, 14 December. NERSA will be streaming the meeting (in audio format) on its Twitter account.