By Ebi Kesiena
Minister of electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has stated that the gap between South Africa’s demand for electricity and the amount being generated is closing, and the energy crisis has finally entered the recovery phase.
Speaking at a briefing on the progress of the Action Energy Plan at the GCIS offices in Tshwane on Sunday, Ramokgopa said positive developments in various areas had all contributed to steady, stable and general improvement, with the current outlook being no load-shedding for 16 hours per day.
While significant improvements and some degree of relief was happening.
“There has not been one single solution, but rather a combination of factors, one of them being that the anticipated worst-case winter demand scenario of a need for 34,000MW a day had not happened.
“We hit a demand high on June 28 at 31,000MW, but now we are beginning to plateau at 29,000MW,” he said,
Adding he explained that he was encouraged to see less oscillations in power supply, which appeared to have stabilised.
Recoveries in generation meant Eskom was able to ramp up planned maintenance in winter “and so we are getting closer to where we want to be” he said.
Also, he explained that partial load losses incidents where power plants are unable to generate their maximum capacity were receiving attention.
“We are diagnosing the situation to determine where the failures of these units are, and then looking at the common problems. We have found boiler tube leaks to be the main culprit and we have the expertise to address this.
“At the moment we are averaging 1,503MW a day on outage slips, down from a high in May of about 4,000MW.”
He however added that the demand for electricity was expected to increase as more people are connected to the grid, meaning the issue of transmission needed to be addressed with speed.
