‘Not yet out of the woods, but SA beginning to bear fruits’ – Ramokgopa

Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa says South Africa’s power supply is significantly improving, thus, reducing the intensity of load shedding.

‘Beginning to bear fruits’

Briefing the media on the updates on implementing the Energy Action Plan, Ramokgopa said while South Africa had turned a corner, it was “not yet out of the woods”.

The minister said the country was beginning to show “sustained improved performance over an extended period of time”.

“This is good news in that it is an affirmation and validation of the work that the team is doing at Eskom … exceptional amount of work and application that is being done,” he said on Monday.

Ramokgopa explained that higher stages of load shedding was necessary in the past few weeks and as a result, some generating units had returned to service earlier than expected.

“These plans that have been put in motion are beginning to bear fruits, and we are beginning to see some kind of gains.”

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The minister said available generation was increasing, with the energy availability factor (EAF) standing around 60%.

“What do the numbers tell us? Outside the fact that our lights are on for most of the hours of the day, we have seen that we have come out of a period of sustained load shedding. That’s significant at multiple levels. It’s significant psychologically because we are beginning to illustrate that it’s possible for us to come out of load shedding.

“Since we came into office, we have not had a sustained period of load shedding. I make the point that for us to get to a period where we have 365 days of no load shedding, it starts with one day without load shedding.”

[In pictures] The Minister in the Presidency responsible for Electricity, Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa updates media on the implementation of the #EnergyActionPlan. pic.twitter.com/Q8TR3Q9AuA

— South African Government (@GovernmentZA) October 23, 2023

30 000 MW target

According to Ramokgopa, the baseline average capacity stood at 27 410 megawatts (MW) in May.

However, this increased to 28 268 MW as of the first weeks of October.

“You can see we have added an additional 800 megawatts,” he said.

The minister said the average capacity reached 29 418 MW last week.

“In fact, on Thursday and Friday, we were beginning to breach 30 000 megawatts … so this is a game of numbers and those numbers translates itself in the number of hours the lights are on.

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“We are consistently breaching the 30 000 megawatts mark, and our goal is to continue this trend.”

He said partial load losses still remained an area of concern as there was little improvement.

Ramokgopa said Eskom was actively looking at both internal and external expertise to deal with the load losses, particularly from power stations which were notorious for breakdowns during the summer period.

“I’m confident that over a period of time we will bring partial load losses down.”

Watch the briefing below:

New generating capacity

Ramokgopa also confirmed that a total of 1 136 MW had been approved for Eskom’s standard offer programme, which exceeded the target of 1 000 MW.

“That’s a significant achievement. We are trying to illustrate that there’s no overreliance on the performance of Eskom’s fleet … as we go into the future it’s important that new sources of generation [are available]. This makes it possible to relief Eskom from super exploiting the open-cycle gas turbine to burn diesel because we will have an additional 1 136 MW.”

Furthermore, 1 338 MW will be expected to be connected to the grid this year and 3 081 MW in 2024, according to the minister.

READ MORE: Kieswetter estimates load shedding cost economy about R150bn

Regarding the Koeberg Power Station, Ramokgopa said a detailed update on the matter would be provided at a later date. 

He added that Eskom was working hard to ensure the reliability of the ageing generation units.

“As they are ageing, the kind of performance that you expect is also going to taper down unless we make significant investments in new technology, and of course, you need to juxtapose that with the cost of doing that or just rely on new generation capacity. You can’t solely rely on these power stations.”