Cape Town — Minister of Electricity Kgotsientsho Ramokgopa on Monday briefed the media on the Energy Action Plan and said that despite great improvements, load shedding is not “behind us just yet”.
Ramokgopa said Eskom’s improved performance was due to a concerted effort by the power utility and the government to effectively deal with load shedding, SA Gov News reported.
“The kind of progress that we are seeing today is largely as a result of the exceptional work that has been done by the team at Eskom. We are turning the corner and making significant strides to ensure that finally we get to see the back of load shedding.” Ramokgopa said.
He said that Eskom and South Africa were not out of the woods yet but significant improvements were made in the past week in relation to unplanned capacity loss factors.
The Minister said that although the improvements were commendable, focus was still firmly on the work that still needed to be done.
“We are keeping focus on the bouncing ball, the resolution of loadshedding. I must emphasise that in the nature of this space, you are likely to have setbacks. We are still working on the reliability of these machines and that’s why you can’t speak with great confidence that load shedding is behind us.”
Eskom’s performance over the past three weeks – which has seen no #Loadshedding being implemented – is a result of concerted and deliberate plans by the power utility and government to deal with load shedding, says Minister Ramokgopa https://t.co/Wh9dtXQ2km
— @SAgovnews (@SAgovnews) April 22, 2024
According to The Citizen, Ramokgopa dismissed reports that the government was keeping load shedding away until elections.
Democratic Alliance (DA) leader, John Steenhuisen, has reportedly said that the power utility was burning more diesel than it had budgeted for on its open-cycle gas turbines to give the illusion of a more stable grid and to keep load shedding at bay. Ramokgopa dismissed such suggestions and seemingly took a dig at Steenhuisen’s high school education.
But Ramokgopa said: “I sympathise with some of the political actors, some of the statements they make, some of their writings. I appreciate that they have no knowledge, or limited knowledge, about the performance of this complex engineering system.
“I can assure the SA public that the Eskom board will not do things that are politically short-sighted and will damage the South African grid. They would not do that.
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Compiled by Matthew Petersen
