‘It’s not staged’ – Ramokgopa says no link between lack of load shedding and elections

Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has refuted claims suggesting that the absence of load shedding is tied to the upcoming national and provincial elections.

Eskom said its performance in generating electricity has improved recently because of planned maintenance and other factors.

This has, therefore, kept load shedding at bay for 40 consecutive days ahead of the much anticipated polls on 29 May.

Eskom improvement

Addressing the media at the Tshedimotso House in Pretoria, Ramokgopa said Eskom’s winter outlook plan on load shedding demonstrated that there was a “structural improvement” in regards to generation capacity.

The minister said at least 1 000 megawatts (MW) has been “clawed back” compared to the same period the previous year.

Solar energy

He revealed that the decrease in evening peak demand also played a part as household and businesses reduce their reliance on Eskom and instead use solar panels for electricity.

“[This] is on the back of incentives provided for by the National Treasury,” Ramokgopa said on Monday.

ALSO READ: ‘Load shedding suspension not ploy to buy votes for ANC’ – Presidency

Ramokgopa said strides were being made on the energy action plan, highlighting that the main target was fixing Eskom – including dealing with the unplanned capacity loss factor (UCLF).

“Our biggest enemy is to ensure that we address the issue of units. This talks to the reliability of the units. They are not giving us the megawatts that we want. Although they are not taken off the grid, they are not performing at the level we want.”

He said the country was moving in the right direction, but it had to be accepted that there may be “momentary setbacks”.

Watch the briefing below:

No load shedding due to elections?

Ramokgopa also dismissed suggestions that South Africa isn’t experiencing load shedding due to the general elections.

“We are in the silly season. There’s going to be a number of interpretations of what is before us, whether there is a correlation of this improvement to the elections,” he said.

“There is no correlation between this performance and the date of the 29th of May. When the team were making these efforts, when we ramped up planned maintenance in December and January, little did we know that there would be a big date with ballots,” Ramokgopa continued.

The minister emphasised that the suspension of the rolling blackouts was not part of an underlying plot.

“This is not staged. This is not managed. This is an orchestrated effort and engineering feat by the team at Eskom.

READ MORE: Eskom predicts stage 2 load shedding over winter, stage 5 in worst-case scenario

“What we know is that UCF is tracking at about 29% as of April 2024, as opposed to 34% of April 2023. So we have recovered, in percentage terms, five percentage points over a period of the same period in April and the comparable period this year in April.

“Again, you do not earn and recover that five percentage points suddenly because the date of the elections has been announced.

“This is a result of process mapping, in engineering terms, the stabilisation of management ensuring that we use and deploy this fiscal injection received from National Treasury, identifying candidate stations that can give us the best returns in a short space of time. All of these things is yielding the results that are pointing us in the right direction.”

Ramokgopa stressed that the end of load shedding was “within touching distance”.

“We are not yet there. I will not make a false claim that we are there, but we are getting there even much quicker than we had anticipated,” he added.

Load shedding remains suspended until further notice, with the energy availability factor (EAF) currently standing at 65%.

#POWERALERT1

Loadshedding remains suspended due to continued sustained improvement in Generation performance and a 4 400MW reduction in unplanned outages pic.twitter.com/oe1HweVQjt

— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) May 5, 2024