Government seeking ‘legal interpretation’ of load shedding court order – Ramokgopa

Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has disclosed that government is considering obtaining a “legal interpretation” of the order of the Gauteng Division of the High Court – that he ensure all police stations, public schools, clinics and hospitals are load-shedding-free by 31 January 2024 – which will buy it some time.

He spoke about the issue at a briefing on Sunday (10 December). According to Ramokgopa, it needs to be determined whether the ruling means 31 January is the deadline to provide a feasibility execution plan, or for the execution itself.

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In addition to an extremely wide-ranging declarator that puts the blame for the electricity crisis squarely at the feet of government’s unconstitutional conduct over almost 30 years, the court ordered Ramokgopa to:

“… take all reasonable steps by no later than 31 January 2023, whether in conjunction with Eskom and other organs of state or not, to ensure there shall be sufficient supply of generation of electricity to prevent any interruption of supply as a result of loadshedding” to these institutions.”

Asked where the money will come from to do what the court has ordered, Ramokgopa said that is still to be determined.

Clarity first, then discussions

The first step is to determine the right legal interpretation of what must be done by the deadline and that will inform the discussion within government about which budgets should be used.

Ramokgopa emphasised that government is determined to spare police stations, public schools, clinics and hospitals from load shedding “even without the court order”.

He said there was never any dispute about the fact that government’s conduct breached the constitutional rights of South Africans through its conduct, as the court declared, and it was even conceded in the court papers.

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At the same briefing Ramokgopa welcomed the appointment of Dan Marokane as new Eskom group CEO after this was approved by cabinet on 8 December. “Leadership is key to solving the energy crisis,” he said.

“Certainty is key to resolve a crisis of this magnitude,” he added, saying that with people in acting leadership roles there is often hesitation to take important decisions.

He thanked Calib Cassim, acting Eskom group CEO, for his assistance in the 10 months the position has been vacant following the departure of former Eskom group CEO André de Ruyter in February.

Ramokgopa was unable to disclose whether Cassim will stay on with the utility after his term of employment ends at the end of December.

He said that is for the Eskom board to announce.

Ramokgopa also made several important announcements:

• Cabinet on 8 December also approved the draft updated Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) that sets out the country’s energy mix by indicating the technology and extent of new generation to be added up to 2030 and between 2030 and 2050. It further sets out the cost implications. The IRP will be published for public comment.
• Cabinet referred the “transformative and revolutionary” transmission funding plan he proposed back for further discussion at the National Energy Crisis Committee (Necom). He said cabinet required more work on the numbers attached to the governance structures proposed for the transmission function.
• Koeberg Unit 2 will be taken offline on 11 December for the replacement of its three steam generators as part of the project aimed at extending the life of Koeberg by another 20 years. The plan is to recommission it in September next year, depending on the decision of the National Nuclear Regulator whether to grant the application for the life-extension or not. Eskom head of generation Bheki Nxumalo said at the same event that Koeberg Unit , which was recently returned to service after an outage of about 11 months for the same purpose, is operating well and producing on average 924MW.
• Government has received two applications for the extension of the deadline later this month for financial close on the outstanding projects in the Risk Mitigation Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (RMIPPP) and is considering the matter.
• Ramokgopa will on Tuesday hold a media briefing about the determination to procure new nuclear generation capacity. It is not yet clear what the draft updated IRP includes regarding nuclear, but the minister of minerals and energy got concurrence from energy regulator Nersa in 2021 for the procurement of 2 500MW of nuclear energy.

At that stage it would, in terms of the IRP 2019, have been conventional nuclear technology “at a pace and scale” government could afford, and would only come online after 2030.

It is expected that the updated draft will provide for recent technological advances such as small modular reactors.

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Regarding the current state of the power system, Ramokgopa said 13 127MW of generation capacity is currently unavailable due to unplanned breakages and partial load losses. This has in the past been as high as 18 000MW.

Planned maintenance is being ramped up, as is always the case in the summer holidays, while Eskom’s open-cycle gas turbines (OCGTs) and pumped storage units are all at adequate diesel and water levels.

Ramokgopa said that if this remains the case, he does not expect load shedding to intensify over the holiday season.

This article was republished from Moneyweb. Read the original here