The moving target that is the deadline for completion of the Medupi power station in Limpopo just keeps on shifting. The prohibitively expensive megaplant, which will eventually produce 4800MW of precious power for our massively constrained national grid, should have been completed by 2013.Prolonged and repeated labour disputes, problems with the work done by contractors, poor project management and inadequate oversight quickly put paid to that ambition.As the months turned into years, delays at Medupi, as well as at the Kusile and Ingula projects, began to wreak a terrible toll on the economy. As Eskom battled to keep the lights on, essential maintenance work was not done at our ageing coal-fired power stations, resulting in unplanned outages and load-shedding.Huge cost overruns at the megaprojects, Eskom's inability to secure substantial tariff hikes and the fact that it has been forced to run its emergency diesel generators around the clock have increased its funding shortfall to around R255-billion.Brian Molefe, who has been parachuted in to turn Eskom around after successful stints at Transnet and the Public Investment Corporation, insists the power utility is not bankrupt and will, with continued state support, meet all its financial obligations.Molefe was also optimistic yesterday that Eskom would be able to ''find'' 3 000 megawatts of power - required to end the current rolling blackouts - by the end of this year.Consumers, who by yesterday had endured seven consecutive days of load-shedding, will be sceptical about his optimistic projections.But if he succeeds through tight financial controls and oversight of maintenance work and by opening the grid to independent power producers, then good luck to him.In the longer term, getting the new power stations on line will be the major challenge.In November Eskom predicted that Medupi would be fully operational by 2019; by yesterday the target had shifted to 2021...