The teams have also identified six power stations that would give South Africa the most generation capacity and help recover in the short-term. File Picture: Phando Jikelo/ Independent Newspapers
South Africa has been experiencing uninterrupted power supply, with load shedding kept safely at bay for the last week, but Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa says he cannot make any promises it would remain as such.
While the country’s power system has seemed to be on a healthy streak, Ramokgopa reminded South Africans that many large industries were currently shut down for the festive period, reducing the heavy load on the grid.
“We cannot really celebrate no load shedding while the South African economy is on a go-slow due to big industries shutting down in this period,” Ramokgopa said.
“However, while we are able to, we are accelerating maintenance to ensure that we sustain this positive streak when the big industries return.”
Currently there was about 27,700MW of power available, while the average demand was at around 24,000MW. This meant that there has not been a need to load shed.
In that light, Ramokgopa said that the next two weeks also looked positive, as the demand and supply is expected to remain as such.
In addition, he said that “for the first time, in a long time”, the amount of losses were below 11,000MW, but the point was not to maintain it.
The teams have identified six power stations that would give South Africa the most generation capacity and help recover in the short-term. This, Ramokgopa said, would help bolster the aggregate performance of Eskom.
While the teams were using the opportunities to conduct much-needed maintenance at these power stations, he said they were trying every possible way to avert a failure of a cluster of units, “but I cannot make any promises”.
“We all want the public to enjoy no load shedding for as long as possible,” he said.
kailene.pillay@inl.co.za
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