National Transmission Company of South Africa

It's definitely something that needs to be addressed.

Uh, to some extent, Eskom, or it'll now actually be, uh, NTCSA, or National Transmission Company of South Africa, is looking at its own build-out, uh, but also trying to bring the private sector in there, and unfortunately that has been delayed versus everyone's expectations, uh, for the rollout of that.

If you think that we currently sit on, I think it's around just over 33,000 kilometers of transmission grid, looking to build out roughly 14,000 kilometers in the next now eight years.

It was meant to be 10 years when this plan came out, but unfortunately we've not been building or, or adding very much to the grid over the last two years since the TDP, transmission development plan, came out.

So supply is greater than demand.

Then the National Transmission Company says to the power producers, stop feeding your power into the grid.

But because of the contract, that the power producers have with government, they must still be paid.

So they are being paid for energy which the country is then not using.

It's a take-or-pay arrangement.

So if we don't receive that electricity, it's deemed the electricity supply, and we have to, NTCSA has to pay them.

Just some of the numbers, about 2 billion rands over the financial year.

On the other side, you also have take-or-pay arrangement with the coal suppliers.