The Minister of Electricity Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has attributed the almost two weeks of no loadshedding in the country to planned maintenance at Eskom.
This as today marks the 12th consecutive day without load shedding.
“The ramping up of planned maintenance is very important.
If you look at the period December 2023, going into January of 2024, we took out 18% of the total generation capacity, about 9000 megawatts at a go, for planned maintenance.
“We are beginning to see these machines coming back into service.
They are coming back on load and adding to the capacity of the grid, and this is helping us to address the demand,” said Ramokgopa during a media briefing in Pretoria to provide an update on the implementation of the Energy Action Plan.
He said the successes can also be ascribed to interventions implemented by Eskom which include among others the improvement of plant conditions, the establishment of the War Room, increased governance controls and achieving coal stock days.
Ramokgopa however warned that the load shedding situation might change anytime soon.
“There’s going to be a momentary setback given the nature of these machines.
It is almost a given that we’re going to encounter setbacks.
But it is important that as we encounter those setbacks, we don’t lose sight,” explained Ramokgopa.
The Minister also highlighted that the intensity of load shedding is coming down, when compared to the previous years.
“If you look at the higher stages, stage 4 last year the month of March, was 12, this year, it’s four.
Stage 5 last year March it was six, and we didn’t have this year.
Stage 6, we didn’t have for both years.
And if you put them together for the month of March number of days of loadshedding it was 30 days where we had these various stages of load shedding compared to 26.
Stage 1 to stage 2 accounted for half of what we experienced this year, as compared to stage 4 and 5 from last year, which accounted for half of what was experienced,’ highlighted Ramokgopa.
Meanwhile, the Minister added that Medupi Power Station Unit 4 is on track to be commissioned in August 2024, Koeberg Unit 2 is on track to return to service in September 2024, while Kusile Unit 6 is planned to synchronise in September 2024.
