By: Natasha Archary

Just a few hours after President Cyril Ramaphosa delivered his 2024 State of the Nation Address (SONA), loadshedding was pushed from Stage 2 to Stage 4.
This begs the question, is everything really under control as the President says?
During his SONA speech, Ramaphosa promised South Africans that the end of loadshedding is finally within reach.
Ramaphosa’s SONA promise
“We set out a clear plan to end loadshedding, which we have been implementing with a singleminded focus through the National Energy Crisis Committee.
We have delivered on our commitments to bring substantial new power through private investment onto the grid, which is already helping to reduce loadshedding.
Last year, we implemented a major debt relief package which will enable Eskom to make investments in maintenance and tranmissions infrastructure and ensure its sustainability going forward.
Since we revived our renewable energy programme 5-years ago, we have connected more than 2 500MW of solar and wind power to the grid with three times this amount already in procurement or construction.
Through tax incentives and financial support, we have more than doubled the amount of rooftop solar capacity installed across the country in just the past year.
We have implemented sweeping regulatory reforms to enable private investment in electricity generation, with more than 120 new private energy projects now in development.
These are phenomenal developments that are driving the restructuring of our electricity sector in line with what many other economies have done to increase competitiveness and bring down prices.
Through all of these actions, we are confident that the worst is behind us and the end of loadshedding is finally within reach.
But we are not stopping there. To ensure that we never face a similar crisis ever again, we are reforming our energy system to make it more competitive, sustainable and reliable into the future.”
Loadshedding pushed to Stage 4
Despite his promise that loadshedding will soon be a thing of the past, Eskom pushed the country to Stage 4 loadshedding shortly after the President’s speech.
The embattled power utility said the reason loadshedding was ramped up was because two additional generation units are being taken out of service for repairs.
As a result Stage 4 loadshedding will be in effect from 02h00 on Friday, 09 February until further notice.
#LoadsheddingUpdate
— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) February 8, 2024
Friday, 09 February 2024:
Due to two additional generation units being taken out of service for repairs, Stage 4 loadshedding will be implemented from 02:00 today until further notice.
Our teams are working tirelessly to return the generation units back…
Also read: Steenhuisen: “Ramaphosa’s SONA just a laundry list of failed promises!”



