Cape Town – Minister of Electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa says Stage 6 load shedding will continue indefinitely, as the system continues to be under significant strain.
Ramokgopa was speaking during a media briefing on Friday, where he gave an update on the implementation of South Africa’s Energy Action Plan.
The minister said that Eskom experienced unplanned outages of about 18 000MW.
“Just this morning, Eskom generation experienced unplanned outages… so collectively, the unplanned outages were sitting at about 18 000 megawatts.
“This is significant. It undermines our ability to maintain load shedding at the lower stages. In addition, we know that there has been several units that are responsible for this kind of poor performance,” he said.
The Minister said that on Monday, when Eskom was trying to retain one of the two units that were out of operation in Kriel, the operation in this exercise resulted in the four operating units being taken out, “essentially increasing unplanned outages”.
Ramokgopa said that there are still units at Tutuka, Lethabo and Medupi power stations that are still offline.
He said that central to the resolution of the load shedding problem was government’s ability to ensure an improvement in the energy availability sector.
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“This unplanned outage resulted with Eskom being forced to implement Stage 6 as Eskom’s communication has been saying that Stage 6 is there indefinitely.
“There are additional measures that we are taking in addition to load shedding which is an instrument that is used to protect the grid and ensure that the country remains within the acceptable band of frequency so that demand doesn’t far exceed supply,” the Minister said.
With the winter period fast approaching, Ramokgopa said the demand is increasing significantly, resulting in a need for government to ensure that it “remains true to these efforts, while making everything possible to accelerate these measures”.
The Minister acknowledged that this is a particularly trying period for South Africans in the history of the country.
“We’re alive to that and we are doing everything possible to ensure that we address the situation,” he said.
Ramokgopa said that Eskom remained on track to ensure that it was able to return three units at Kusile by December. Cumulatively, he said these units should give us off 2 100 megawatts.
“We are not necessarily seeing the results directly because we’re still in the higher stages of load shedding, but we want to give you the comfort and the assurance that we’re doing everything possible to address the situation… I want to give assurance to the country that it is highly unlikely that we will be in a situation where we experience a blackout,” he said.
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Compiled by Betha Madhomu
