Minister of Electricity and Energy, Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa told the media on Monday that the country’s power grid is expected to be strengthened by more generating units by the end of August.
“We are expecting Medupi Unit 4 to give us 800 megawatts (MW) and to fire up Kusile Unit 6, which is another 800MW,” he explained.
“We are hoping to get an extension of life of Koeberg Unit 2 and we are not complacent. We are doing everything by the book and we are still optimistic about getting that extension of life, and it will give us an additional 980MW,” the minister added.
He said that by the end of August, government expects the country could get a further 2,500MW from the Eskom fleet.
Load shedding is not over
The minister said while South Africans have been enjoying 138 days without load shedding, the energy crisis is not over. He said that government remains “buoyant” when it comes to Eskom’s performance but load shedding is still not a thing of the past.
“I really want to caution that load shedding is not behind us. In the next three weeks or so Eskom will be sharing what the summer outlook is. We are still buoyant about the performance of these generation plants,” he added.
“Having said that, we need to caution against any early declaration to decree load shedding as behind us. We do everything possible to resolve this question but the numbers do indicate that we are within touching distance,” Ramokgopa advised.
The minister further added that Tutuka power station has experienced a significant amount of challenges over but government is seeing better results now.
“Just this period from March to August, the unplanned capacity loss factor (UCLF) has reduced by 29%. That’s significant from where Tutuka started and they have moved from 2,411MW to 949MW”.
End of load shedding by October?
Two weeks ago, Professor Sampson Mamphweli of the South African National Energy Development Institute said that government will be declaring the end of load shedding by the end of 2024.
Mamphweli made these comments to Newzroom Afrika and said that there are a number of factors that illustrate that Eskom is improving.
“It’s been a good four months of no load-shedding, and the data that we have from Eskom shows that it’s basically because the system is performing very well,” Mamphweli explained.
“We also have other factors, such as small-scale embedded generation coming onboard. We’ve got about 6GW of rooftop solar PV that has been installed by households and businesses that continue to help, even during winter when the number of sun hours have decreased.”
“It is very much possible that we might see the end of load shedding by you know September October, the beginning of October somewhere depending on the various factors,” Mamphweli said.
“I am very much confident that by the end of November, December government should be declaring the end of load shedding in South Africa,” he concluded.
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