Cape Town — Minister of Electricity, Kgotsientso Ramokgopa, has attributed the reduced levels of rolling blackouts due to planned maintenance and good management of the power plants.
Ramokgopa addressed the media and gave an update on the Energy Action Plan and said the reason the country has gone nearly two weeks without any power disruptions is due to the implementation of excellent planned maintenance, saying the country’s current energy supply is higher than the demand, SABC News reported.
“We made the ramping up of planned maintenance very important. That’s why I made the point that if you look at the December period of 2023 going into January 2024, we took out 18% of the generation of energy capacity, about 9000MW at a go for planned maintenance…and we’re beginning to see that these machines are coming back into service. They’re coming back on load and they are adding to the capacity on the grid and this is helping us to address the demand.” Ramokgopa said.
Electricity Minister Kgosientso Ramokgopa giving and update on the Energy Action Plan at this hour.
– Medupi’s plan is improving.
– Outage budgeting has improved.
– National Treasury has relaxed some requirements that will speed up procurement.#KayaNews KS. pic.twitter.com/eN8UfgnX2c— Kaya 959 News (@KayaNews) April 9, 2024
According to EWN, Ramokgopa said implementing renewable energy like solar power won’t bring load shedding to an end, but they remain on course to end it through various other measures.
He told Parliament that there had been 600 less hours of load shedding between December 2023 and February 2024, compared to the same time period last year. He also attributed stages 1 and 2 as the main contributing factors.
“So what is the message that we are conveying here? It’s that the intensity of load shedding is coming down and that’s the point I make all the time. It’s just a general appreciation on the trendline. And that’s why I’m saying that it’s a misnomer to talk of renewables saving us from load shedding, it’s a combination of that.” he added.
[WATCH] Electricity Minister Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa says the intensity of #loadshedding is coming down. He adds that stages 1 and 2 of #loadshedding accounted for half of the power cuts South Africa experienced this year.#Newzroom405 pic.twitter.com/7CTlj7MJ0g
— Newzroom Afrika (@Newzroom405) April 9, 2024
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Compiled by Matthew Petersen
