Minister of Electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa delivers a weekly update on the state of Eskom, load shedding and the Energy Action Plan in South Africa. Image: GCIS
Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa says the heightened load shedding of Stage 6 this week was being treated as an extraordinary occurrence and the indications for the rest of the week were showing an outlook of Stage 3 and 4 blackouts.
He said there would be short term pain, but long term gain as they were not willing to compromise on maintenance programmes in order to keep the lights on.
“There will be momentary setbacks, and this is what happened this week. The outlook now for the week is Stage 3, 4 load shedding,” he said.
Ramokgopa was speaking during a media briefing on Sunday at the GCIS head offices in Pretoria.
“We are going to take the necessary measures to resolve load shedding. We are not going to take short-cuts to defeat load shedding,” he said.
He said they would be sticking to their maintenance programme.
Ramokgopa said Kusile was key to ensuring an end to load shedding, saying there forecast was still showing that one unit at Kusile could return in November, while three more were expected to return in December.
Ramokgopa is expected to lead an Eskom senior management delegation to Kusile on Monday, where they are expected to have extensive engagements and possibly find out if it they would be able to “truncate” the return to service of those units earlier than expected.
About 3000 megawatts were expected from Kusile, once their units were back up, while Tutuka was also performing better, he said.
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