Electricity minister vows to tackle load reduction

The Minister of Electricity and Energy Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has addressed the efforts done by Eskom and his department in dealing with load reduction.

Load reduction was implemented several months ago in Gauteng to ease pressure on the grid, protect its transformers, and discourage illegal connections.

“Despite continued public information campaigns to customers about the implications of electricity theft activities, Eskom has no other option but to implement load reduction to protect its assets from repeated failures and explosions, which pose a risk to human lives,” Eskom said of the programme in July.

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‘Hard at work’ to find a solution

The load reduction has left South Africans frustrated by outages for over four months, and the electricity minister said it was being looked at.

“We are generating more than enough to meet the demand, these are downstream challenges that we are faced with both on the Eskom and municipal side,” he explained.

Ramokgopa said Eskom’s Group Executive for Distribution Monde Bala was “hard at work with municipalities” to address the outages.

“I am leading those efforts to see how we can address the situation.

“Of course, accompanying this is ageing infrastructure and absence of investments,” he added.

The Citizen reached out to Ramokgopa’s office for additional comment and clarity on these efforts but has yet to receive a response. An update will be published when the comment is received.

‘We are suffering’

Last month, more than 200 people from four villages in Limpopo marched to the Eskom offices in Thohoyandou to demand an end to load reduction.

“We are suffering, including school leaders and students. We blame load reduction for the rise in crime,” resident Makondelele Singo told GroundUp.

It came as matrics in the province also detailed their struggles in studying for their final exams.

“Lights always go off during extra classes from 5am to 7am.

“In the afternoon, power goes off again from 5pm to 7pm. My plea to the government is to make education an essential service,” a Grade 12 pupil at Boke High School, outside Tzaneen, told The Citizen.

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Eskom’s fleet performance milestones

Eskom this week celebrated reaching a five-year milestone of more than 200 days without load shedding.

Ramokgopa attributed the improved fleet performance to enhanced recovery management, better maintenance, and fewer unscheduled power plant outages.

According to him, Eskom is expected to achieve its goal of 70% Energy Availability Factor (EAF) by 2025 with EAF rising by 6% to 63.9%. Unplanned outages have also improved in the interim.

ALSO READ: 201 days without load shedding: ‘No lies, we’re not out of the woods yet’ – Ramokgopa [VIDEO]

Despite this, the power utility’s plans to recover units at the Medupi Power Station have not been as successful.

“This is a concern because it’s one of the newest [units we have in our fleet]. We have invested a lot of money and priced that money into the tariff, and then it is not performing as it ought to be.

“It’s important that we can take account of the performance of the fleet and we don’t just give you the aggregate. I want to say that; ‘yes those shortcomings are there and that’s something that we want to address going forward'”.

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