Kgosiensho Ramokgopa, Minister of Electricity;
TPower Minister Kgosiensho Ramokgopa said on Monday that the country had now been without load for 40 days, but this was the result of “organized efforts and engineering feats by the Eskom team” and that the government was looking ahead to elections later this month. He said it's not because there are.
Ramokgopa told a media briefing that the avoidance of load shedding was also thanks to last year's maintenance and lower demand during peak periods.
“What we do know is that the unplanned capacity loss rate remains at around 29% as of April 2024, compared to 34% in April 2023. “So this April has recovered by 5 percentage points compared to last year,” he said.
Unplanned capacity loss factor refers to unplanned energy losses due to generation units not working well or at all.
“Just because an election date is announced doesn’t mean we can suddenly get that five percentage points or recover that,” Ramogopa said, adding that this was a credit to Eskom staff.
“As the team was doing these efforts, ramping up planned maintenance in December and January, little did we know that we would have a big day on the ballot,” he said.
“In engineering terms, this is the result of process mapping, which ensures the use and deployment of the financial inputs received from the national treasury and stabilizes operations by identifying candidate stations that can deliver the greatest benefits in the short term. This is the result of
“There is no correlation between this performance and the May 29th date,” he reiterated.
Some skeptics suggest Eskom could have kept the lights on by burning more diesel. This is because the governing ANC is concerned that load-shedding in the run-up to the election will hurt its chances with voters.
Ramokgopa, however, debunked these allegations, saying the power company relies only on maintenance. He added that Eskom hopes to reduce its diesel usage this financial year and avoid a repeat of last year's situation, when it spent R21 billion. This is R15 billion more than the R6.1 billion the utility was authorized to spend.
Mr Ramokgopa said the Eskom board was on track to achieve its 2024 energy availability target of 65% (a measure of plant performance) and end load shedding. The board was mandated to achieve the energy availability target of 65% in March 2022, 2024 and 70% in April 2025.
Mr Ramokgopa said on Monday that Eskom was seeing positive trends towards its goal of ending load shedding. “I don't want to falsely claim that we're getting there, but we're getting there much faster than expected.”
He said the restart of the 800 MW Medupi Unit 4, the Koeberg Unit 2 (980 MW), and the synchronization of the Kushiru Unit 6 (800 MW), which will add 2,580 MW of power to the grid within the next six months, will continue. He said he was deaf. The outlook for Eskom improves, especially during the winter months.
Eskom said in a statement on Sunday that over the past few weeks “we have seen consistent and significant improvements in reducing unplanned outages, driven by the success of the power generation recovery plan launched in March 2023.”
Ramogopa said on Monday that unplanned outages are on the decline, saying, “From April 26, 2024 to date, unplanned outages have decreased by nearly 4,400 MW from 15,523 MW to 11,036 MW.”