S. African power utility warns of more blackouts

   JOHANNESBURG, Jan. 31 -- South Africa's power utility Eskom on Friday warned of more "unavoidable" load shedding, or controlled blackouts.
   Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter told a press briefing in Johannesburg that it is inevitable to implement load-shedding due to unplanned outages.
   "Our system is constrained. It is unreliable and it's unpredictable," he said. "It is prone to outages and breakdown. We want to assure the nation that critical maintenance is being done to units on planned outages as well as some of those on unplanned outages to ensure their timeous return to service."
   "We neglected in the past to have scheduled maintenance," Ruyter said. "We will have to give ourselves the space to fix what needs to be fixed."
   Eskom will be unbundled into three entities of generation, transmission and distribution, he said.
   "Improving our income statement, addressing our balance sheet, addressing corruption, carrying out organizational restructuring, and achieving operational stability.... Once that is done, we will start running the three division-like businesses with full accountability, which will put management in a far better position to get our arms around Eskom in ensuring there's accountability," Ruyter said.  Xinhua