Cape Town – Minister of Electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has attributed the current stage 6 load shedding to Eskom’s aggressive maintenance strategy, which aims to improve long-term power reliability.
Eskom implemented stage 6 on Sunday in response to multiple unit failures and ongoing maintenance, which accounted for 7,506 MW of downtime.
“We are guided by the generation recovery plan, which places front-centre investments on the installed fleet, ensuring we have these machines reliable. As part of that, we had to up our maintenance. So we had to go to levels of maintenance that have not been recorded in the recent past history,” Ramokgopa said.
WATCH LIVE | Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa and Eskom brief media on the status of South Africa’s electricity generation performance#Loadshedding#GovZAUpdates #ServiceDeliveryZA https://t.co/NHwz152Veg
— South African Government (@GovernmentZA) February 23, 2025
“Our planned maintenance is sitting at 7 500MW, which is significantly higher than the same period last year. We have accepted that there are inherent risks in this decision that we have taken.”
Despite the disruption, Ramokgopa insisted that maintenance must continue to prevent catastrophic failures in the future.
He assured that six of the ten failed units have been restored, and load shedding is expected to ease soon.
Officials anticipate returning to normal conditions by the end of the week.
Ramokgopa dismissed sabotage claims, stating the crisis is purely technical.
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Compiled by Betha Madhomu
