Will there be load shedding this winter? Energy Minister gives his verdict…
On Wednesday, Electricity and Energy Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said South Africans could be in for a winter without load-shedding.
This is thanks to improved generation capacity and the return of key power units.
Speaking at the G20 Energy Transitions Working Group meeting in Cape Town, Ramokgopa expressed cautious optimism about a blackout-free winter.
Ramokgopa emphasised that power plant performance is expected to match — if not exceed — last year's levels.
He noted that there is 'no reason' for performance to decline, despite some ongoing challenges.
Without giving too much away, he said a more detailed winter outlook will be presented on 5 May.
'When we went into winter last year, we didn't have Kusile Unit 6, so we didn't have that 800MW,' Ramokgopa told EWN .
'The second thing is that we didn't have Medupi 4. We will have Medupi 4 by the end of May, which has been out for about four years, so that's another 800MW.'
'We are also going to have the benefits of both Koeberg units.'
To that end, Koeberg unit number 1 is expected to come back online in July.
Altogether, the country is projected to have about 2 500MW more electricity during peak winter demand than it did last year.
South Africans have a right to be skeptical however, after Eskom announced Stage 2 load shedding last Thursday.
This marked the first time in over 30 days that the power utility enforced rolling blackouts.
In a statement, Eskom attributed the load shedding to the loss of generation units and higher-than-usual demand.
By Friday morning, the power utility declared that there had been a recovery of generation units, and suspended load shedding.
Nonetheless, with winter looming, it didn't inspire confidence about energy availibility over the coming months.
While acknowledging that the Energy Availability Factor (EAF) remained below ideal levels in April, Ramokgopa attributed the recent issues to isolated post-maintenance failures.
'That was post-outage failure,' the Minister added.
'When you take the unit out on planned maintenance, when it comes back, it can still present a significant number of challenges. So that's something the team is addressing.'
'I really don't foresee that we are going to perform below what we did last year.'
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