Ramokgopa laments 'unreliable grid' as load shedding returns
Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa says while Eskom is working hard to improve its generation capacity, planned power cuts will remain part of South Africans' daily routine.
Ramokgopa briefed the media on Tuesday morning, hours before Eskom announced the return of stage 1 and 2 of load shedding.
“The setback experienced in returning two generating units to service as well as the loss of three generating units necessitated the implementation of stage 2 load shedding from 16:00 today (Tuesday),” Eskom said in a statement.
“Thereafter, stage 1 load shedding will be implemented from 05:00 until 16:00 on Wednesday. This pattern of stage 1 load shedding from 05:00 to 16:00 and stage 2 load shedding from 16:00 to 05:00 will continue until further notice.”
During the briefing, Ramokgopa explained that while some units returned to capacity over the past few months, the utility still has unreliable units, making it impossible to suspend load shedding.
“We will have periods of days of no-load shedding, and there will be days of load shedding. Eskom has announced its summer outlook, and it makes the point that we should not be at more than stage 4 level of load shedding.
“While demand was low during the week of 22- 29 December 2023, Eskom was working to address issues of its fleet and used the opportunity to carry out planned maintenance.
“We have been working during the festive season to ensure that we address issues of the fleet to continue to perform but also readying the fleet to ensure that once there is a ramp up of demand, the units can return to service and remain in service while delivering efficient megawatts," he said.
At the same time, the minister said the utility has worked hard to avoid past mistakes.
“If you had to look at the work that has been done at Eskom, they have reduced repeat failures. We have an additional buffer for instances of a cluster of units failing where you do not have to initiate load shedding, or if you do, it is not at intense levels.
“Unit 1 at Kusile experienced significant delays about the timeline to return to service, which was set for June last year, but it returned five months later due to outage slips. We are confident that the work that has been done by the generation team has ensured that we will not have a repeat when we want to return unit 2, which is currently out.
"For us to get to a situation where we have electricity 24/7, 365, it starts with one day, two days a week, a month and a year."
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