By Akani Nkuna
Electricity and Energy Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has confidently assured the nation that load-shedding would come to an end by the close of the week.
This comes after the nation was thrust into Stage 6 load-shedding early on Sunday.
“I am confident that by the end of the week we should be out of this difficult situation… we are confident we are going to go to conditions of normality. What are those conditions of normality by the end of the week? Is that there will not be load-shedding,” Ramokgopa told reporters in Pretoria.
“We would have gone through this wave and of course… we want the country to get accustomed to being normal and in fact something called load-shedding should be considered extremely abnormal.”
Eskom’s national leadership, including the group chief executive officer (GCEO), Dan Marokane, also attended the media briefing.
Ramokgopa emphasised that Eskom’s leadership has thoroughly analysed and identified the root cause behind the sudden onset of load-shedding. He reassured the public that the disruptions were not due to any acts of sabotage, but rather technical challenges within the power system.
“There is no sabotage on the basis of what is before us. We are able to explain what went wrong and in fact it is something that we are addressing, and we will share with the country and what are those measures we are taking,” he said.
These incidents are not linked to the main plant’s generation capacity but rather to plant failures.
Ramokgopa said Eskom has committed to taking the necessary steps to restore the units.
Marokane said the sudden need for load-shedding from Saturday, which started at stage three, was due to multiple unit failures at Majuba Power Station. It began with a transformer overload during the start-up of a unit recovering from a long outage, triggering a domino effect that cut power to other units.
“[It has] more to do with the support of power to the compressors for both the systems in the units. We have understood the exact nature of how the event came about and we are able to isolate it overnight and start addressing it,” he added.
Marokane stated that in the upcoming week, they would conduct a deeper analysis to ensure the system design could prevent such occurrences in the future.
He also mentioned ongoing work in the Camden area, including last November’s interventions, with plans for further improvements.
“For Camden, we essentially had a failure in [a] hydraulic valve that then triggered us into a position where our cooling water pumps were not adequate for maintaining the requirements of the remainder of the units that were running,” he said
Ramokgopa also reiterated that South Africa remained a top destination for investors and that load-shedding should not discourage their endeavours to engage with the country on such a level.
“Reputable organisations globally have made the point that load-shedding is a structural constraint to the South African economy. We want to eliminate load-shedding as a structural constraint and we are confident that the actions we have taken over the past 16 months are pointing us in the right direction,” said Ramokgopa.
The minister reaffirmed that the department remained committed to the generation recovery plan, despite its inherent risks. He emphasised that efforts would be made to mitigate these risks and highlighted the progress being made in the right direction.
“The levels of plants maintenance will continue to maintain them at proportions that are, in engineering terms, acceptable and also helps us to get to a situation where we are able to eliminate load-shedding in the shortest possible space of time,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Alliance’s Kevin Mileham stated that the sudden escalation to stage 6 highlighted that South Africa could not solely depend on Eskom for electricity.
Excessive reliance on Eskom for maintenance and new capacity has created a supply monopoly, making the system highly vulnerable to failure.
“South Africa urgently needs to open its electricity supply sector, by accelerating the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers Procurement Programme and incentivising the private sector to become more actively involved in addressing our electricity needs,” said Mileham.
INSIDE METROS