Zuko Komisa
“It’s not a moment of celebration” – Electricity Minister reflects on 100 days of no load shedding.
Minister of Electricity and Energy, Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has said the government and Eskom have focused on the load-shedding issue since it reached crisis levels in July 2022, thanks to the Energy Action Plan that President Cyril Ramaphosa launched.
He was speaking on Monday in Tshwane during a media briefing.
While it is great that the nation has reached the 100-day mark without load shedding, Minister of Energy and Electricity Dr. Kgosientsho Ramokgopa notes that it is also an opportunity to consider the effort put into solving the issue.
“We were able to register that milestone…of 100 consecutive days without load shedding. It’s not a moment of celebration. But it’s [a moment] for us to take stock of where we came from and the fact that interventions are working and they are beginning to illustrate that indeed it can be done.
“It’s done…principally by Eskom engineers with little assistance from outside. Yes, there’s that framework from NECOM [National Energy Crisis Committee] getting assistance from outside but fundamentally, it’s driven by Eskom employees,” he said.
“If you look at June last year, we were sitting at 17 000MW of the megawatts that we had lost as a result of the unreliability of these units. Today… that unplanned capacity loss factor is sitting at 12 000MW. So we were able to recoup 5000MW.
“That doesn’t tell the complete story because if you look at the comparative period…you’ll find that our planned capacity loss factor, the number of units that we have taken out to fix them, is still about 1000MW greater than what was the case before. So if you factor that in that number, we have recouped about 6000MW,”
Minister of Electricity and Energy, Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa
What does this mean for South Africans?
South Africa’s days without load-shedding continue to grow. Ayanda Nyathi breaks down some key points from the Electricity Minister, Khosientsho Ramakgopa’s press briefing, with the help of Energy Sector Specialist, Expert Ruse Moleshe, where she explains the changes at Eskom that have contributed positively to energy supply stability.
Listen to the full conversation here:
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