Cape Town – Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Thembi Nkadimeng said the government was developing a plan to deal with national electricity challenges to prevent a total collapse of the grid.
Nkadimeng was responding to parliamentary questions from former DA MP Cilliers Brink, now mayor of Tshwane Metro, when he enquired whether the government had a detailed disaster management plan in place for the risk of a total collapse of the national electricity grid.
In her response, Nkadimeng said the Energy Action Plan would provide “the best and fastest path towards energy security”.
She said Schedule 2 of the Electricity Regulation Act had been amended to remove the licensing requirement for generation projects to accelerate private investment.
“Since the licensing threshold was first raised to 100MW, private sector endeavours have grown to more than 100 projects with over 9 000MW of capacity.
“The first of these large-scale projects is expected to connect to the grid by the end of this year.”
But Nkadimeng conceded that the National Disaster Management Centre (NDMC) did not have a consolidated national disaster management plan in place for the risk of a total collapse of the national electricity grid.
Nkadimeng said the NMDC, as part of its responsibility, has been working with Eskom to ensure the operability and security of the national power system from having a demand overload.
She also said the disaster management centres in all spheres of government had the responsibility to co-ordinate contingency plans developed in terms of the Disaster Management Act.
“All organs of state have a responsibility to conduct a risk assessment for their functional area and formulate contingency arrangements to deal with the risks identified.
“This includes the risk of a total collapse of the national electricity grid and/or complete and/or prolonged electricity outage,” Nkadimeng said.
Cape Times