Cape Town – Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has acknowledged the progress and challenges regarding power supply, particularly as South Africa approaches winter.
While unable to guarantee an end to power cuts, Ramokgopa noted a positive trend in reducing load shedding.
Here is what he said during an interview with EWN:
“And I have said this on many occasions in public… I think once we have significantly more additional generation capacity outside the Eskom fleet, then we can speak confidently of loadshedding being fully behind us.”
“If you look at the period from May last year to where we are this year, we’ve added an additional I think 6 000 megawatts, and that you measure from the amount of failures of the generating units… sitting at 18 000MW. Now, we are at 11 000.”
The minister emphasised the need for additional generation capacity outside Eskom’s fleet to confidently eliminate load shedding.
Last week, he denied allegations linking the absence of load shedding to the upcoming national and provincial elections.
Eskom attributed its improved electricity generation performance to planned maintenance and other factors, resulting in over 40 consecutive days without load shedding.
[WATCH] Electricity Minister Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa denies claims of political pressure on Eskom to keep the lights on ahead of the elections. He attributes the stability of the national grid to the power utility’s efforts.#Newzroom405 pic.twitter.com/1zJLsKdv8i
— Newzroom Afrika (@Newzroom405) May 6, 2024
“There is no correlation between this performance and the date of the 29th of May. When the team was making these efforts, when we ramped up planned maintenance in December and January, little did we know that there would be a big date with ballots,” Ramokgopa said.
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Compiled by Betha Madhomu
