Electricity minister says Cabinet must make ‘tough decisions’ to reduce loading shedding

Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa says Cabinet will have to pick an option on how to reduce load shedding and warned South Africa to brace itself for a “difficult period” during winter.

Ramokgopa held a media briefing on Thursday, to provide an update to the country following his visit to 15 of Eskom’s power plants in the past two weeks.

‘Tough decisions’

Speaking at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, Ramokgopa indicated it was clear that the demand for electricity far outweighed Eskom’s ability to supply power.

“Essentially, we have a situation in the country where demand far outstrips supply and we know that supply comes from the installed fleet of Eskom, over 52 gigawatts of generating capacity,” the minister said.

He said the energy availability factor (EAF) among the power stations currently stood at 53%.

“Our initial computation suggests that we need something in the order of 6 000 megawatts [MW] for us to be able to close this gap.”

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With winter less than two months away, Ramokgopa said the cold season was going to be a “difficult period”, with electricity demand expect to exceed 35 000MW.

“We know that the peak demand in the summer is around 32 000 megawatts.”

The minister said there were three ways to address this gap, including ramping up generation capacity or decreasing the electricity demand.

“The third option is our preferred option [and] it is that – do both [by] ramping up generation capacity and reduce demand, but [without] undermining the ability of households to meet their daily needs [as well as businesses so they can] operate and meet their commercial targets [in order] to get the economy of South Africa going.”

The minister added that “tough decisions” have to be made and pointed out that the available options were for Cabinet to decide on.

Watch the briefing below:

State of disaster

On Wednesday, government officially terminated the national state of disaster it implemented just under two months ago to deal with South Africa’s energy crisis.

Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Thembi Nkadimeng, gazetted the termination on Wednesday morning.

However, the interventions and support measures already in place, as an accelerated response at the time the state of disaster was declared, will remain in place.

NOW READ: Government says state of disaster ended after measures taken to lessen load shedding