Stage 4 powercuts soon after Ramaphosa says loadshedding coming to end
President Cyril Ramaphosa promised South Africans that his government has clear plan to end load shedding.
Ramaphosa delivered his last State of the Nation Address under the 6th administration on Thursday evening.
In the absence of the EFF and any disruption, Ramaphosa calmly tabled the government's achievement over the last 30 years.
On the energy crisis, Ramaphosa said measures have been put in place through the National Energy Crisis Committee to ensure that load shedding becomes a thing of the past.
"We have delivered on our commitments to bring substantial new power through private investment to the grid, which is already helping to reduce load shedding.
Last year, we implemented a major debt relief package which will enable Eskom to make investments in maintenance and transmission infrastructure and ensure its sustainability going forward.
"Since we revived our renewable energy programme five years ago, we have connected more than 2,500 MW of solar and wind power to the grid with three times this amount already in procurement or construction.
"Through tax incentives and financial support, we have more than doubled the amount of rooftop solar capacity installed across the country in just the past year.
"We have implemented sweeping regulatory reforms to enable private investment in electricity generation, with more than 120 new private energy projects now in development," said Ramaphosa.
The president said the restructuring of the electricity sector is in line with what many other economies have done to increase competitiveness and bring down prices.
"To ensure that we never face a similar crisis ever again, we are reforming our energy system to make it more competitive, sustainable and reliable into the future.
"We are going to build more than 14,000km of new transmission lines to accommodate renewable energy over the coming years.
"To fast-track this process, we will enable private investment in transmission infrastructure through a variety of innovative investment models," said Ramaphosa.
But soon after Ramaphosa's announcement, Eskom announced the return of stage 4 power cuts.
"Due to two additional generating units being taken out of service for repairs, Stage 4 loadshedding will be implemented from 02:00 today until further notice.
"Our teams are working tirelessly to return the generation units back online. Eskom will communicate should it be required," said spokesperson Daphne Mokwena.
ALSO READ
