Electricity Minister Kgosientso Ramokgopa says the cold weather is contributing greatly to Eskom’s diminished capability to meet the electricity demand.
Dr Ramokgopa has told a media briefing in Pretoria that the power utility has improved systems and plans to ensure to keep the lights on. He says the focus is to stabilise the energy grid to end load shedding.
“We’re looking forward to the next coming weeks that we should be able to take it down. Of course, there is a cold front especially in the Gauteng area. I did say before that it accounts for about 25% of the load. So I think it is something that is worrying and we are expecting that the demand is going to surge and then if there is no improvement in relation to available capacity does not match those increases from the demand side. Then the only corrective measure that you have is what we call – load shedding.”
The video below is the full address by the minister:
Energy Action Plan
Minister Ramokgopa says there has been an improvement in the implementation of the Energy Action Plan. The Plan was announced by the President Cyril Ramaphosa in July 2022 to provide what the President described as the fastest path towards energy security.
Ramokgopa believes the plan is helping to address the energy situation. “Our intention is to reduce the intensity of load shedding. So [we] were able to show that there is an upward progress from the May baseline. We’ve added more than 1500 megawatts of additional capacity.”
“Because we’ve been able to reduce a number of times that the units are tripping and we would be able to operate at a high efficiency level. That’s what we call reducing partial load losses. We’ve been able to address issues of outage slips [and] bringing back the units at the time that we promise,” adds Ramokgopa.
The post Cold weather hinders Eskom’s capacity to meet electricity demand: Minister appeared first on SABC News .
