More loadshedding as Eskom ramps up maintenance - Ramokgopa
The Minister responsible for Electricity in the Presidency, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, says more and possible higher stages of loadshedding should be expected as Eskom take more units offline for maintenance.
Ramokgopa briefed the media on Saturday morning on government's efforts to end loadshedding.
This comes as Eskom is rolling out Stage 4 of loadshedding until Sunday morning, which is then expected to be followed by Stage 2.
"The current intensity of loadshedding as we are seeing it now is primarily on the back of us ramping up on planned outages.
"We have taken a view that when the generating unit needs to be taken out, we are going to take them out. Of course, we'll do a computation of what that means in relation to the intensity of loadshedding.
"This is controlled intensity of loadshedding to allow us the opportunity to get these machines to be fixed."
Ramokgopa added that there has been a decrease in units tripping on their own due to maintenance.
"We are ramping up planned maintenance so that when these units come back, they come back healthy and they are able to give us the significant amount of hours and also performing at their designed capacity and as a result of that action we are beginning to see that the units tripping on their own is beginning to decrease and that is to allow us to address the available capacity and we should be able to meet the peak focus.
"We will make sure that we do not go to alarming stages of loadshedding. We are doing things right, to avert the problem historically that has landed us to where we are at today."
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