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Eskom wants to increase tariffs by 25% next month

No, the headline isn’t a typo. Moneyweb is reporting this morning that the monopoly power supplier Eskom has applied to the National Energy Regulator, NERSA, to increase its electricity tariffs by 25.3% from the beginning of April.

The company had been given leave by NERSA to increase its charges by 12.69% next month as an earlier revision to the three year plan approved in 2013. The massive hike it’s now seeking is, according to the application, in order to pay for diesel for emergency generators and avoid loadshedding in the winter.

Yesterday, international ratings agency Standard & Poors downgraded investments in Eskom to junk status (via Fin24).

If approved, the rates will hit South Africans hard, but they do make the case for going off-grid more compelling if you can afford it.

Eskom’s application states that the base tariff for 2015/16 would become 79.73c/kWh, but back in January, we found that the company already calculated that the average cost of a unit of electricity from Eskom was 99.8c per kWh. That was already more expensive than solar, which we worked out to be 84c a unit.

Check out Moneyweb’s story here, and read the full application by Eskom here.

If you haven’t yet made plans to find ways to rely less on Eskom, now’s probably a good time to start looking.

[Source – Fin24, Moneyweb]

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