WATCH: ‘We’re generating more than we need’: 5 things Ramokgopa said about load shedding

Speaking during a media briefing to update the country on the state of the electricity grid, Minister of Electricity and Energy Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said that Eskom is moving in the right direction and well on its way to dismantling the load shedding crisis.

“We made the promise that we are going to address this situation and we made the promise that we are confident of our technical ability to resolve what many thought was an intractable challenge. We are within that touching distance,” Ramokgopa said.

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The Minister said Eskom does not expect any major surprises in relation to the performance of the grid for the remainder of the winter and the transition into summer.

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“Of course, this is a dynamic system. These are rotating units and there could be challenges here and there. However, the grid is designed in such a manner where we can call upon the peaking plants to help us to sustain the performance of the grid without relying on load shedding.”

Before the winter season, Eskom had warned that load shedding would be implemented in a situation where unplanned outages went beyond 13 000MW.

“We are doing substantially better than that. We are beginning to see that the system is stable, resilient and becoming more reliable as we move on.”

“The unplanned outages of the generating units average about 10 880MW over the past seven days and we have seen that even going below 10 000MW. I really want to congratulate the men and women at Eskom for being able to keep their shoulder to the wheel and transfix on the resolution of what is essentially an existential crisis facing the country.”

“We are more than confident that we are getting out of the woods,” he said.

Between April and August 8, power stations have been operating with an Energy Availability Factor (EAF) that has reached 60.14%.

“This is major progress that we are making, if you look at where the performance was. If we go back to 2023 when we initiated this intervention, it was substantially lower… we are coming from a low of about 49%.”, Ramokgopa said.

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