'Eskom in good space, the lights are on' Ramokgopa says [VIDEO]

The Citizen

8 hours ago

Ramokgopa said it's no secret that Eskom experienced 'significant challenges' earlier in the year
Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa says Eskom is in a good space and South Africans shouldn't worry about the utility burning through billions of rands in diesel to keep the lights on because it's all part of the plan.
Ramokgopa was briefing the media on the state of the electricity grid on Wednesday.
The minister cited improvements in performance and stability across the national grid, despite Eskom spending billions on diesel.
Challenges
Ramokgopa said it's no secret that Eskom experienced 'significant challenges'.
'At the beginning of the financial year, in April, we relied more and more on the diesel to be able to support us, and this diesel was able to support us because it's meant to support us during those periods of difficulty.'
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Ramokgopa said Eskom has a budget of R12 billion for diesel for the current financial year, and so far has spent just below half of that.
'We've spent about R5 billion. Then the next question you'll ask, but you said at the beginning of the financial year, we have spent close to over 40% of your annual allocation. It is because it is during winter when the intensity of the demand reaches the peak, and that's when we are likely going to experience challenges if some units fail, because we don't have the headroom for us to be able to absorb those failures of the units.
'What do we do? We then call on our ace card, which is the pickers come and help us. So they're designed to do that. I mean, just to give you a context for the period of 1 April to 31 August in 2023, just that period, we used about R14.8 billion,' Ramokgopa said.
Load shedding
Ramokgopa said there will be no load shedding for the rest of the winter period, going into the summer months.
He highlighted an improvement in the Energy Availability Factor (EAF), the reduced use of diesel and lower outage slips.
Ramokgopa said the return to service of Kusile Unit 6 and Medupi Unit 4 were among the reasons there has been no load shedding this winter. He also said improvements at other power stations have eased the burden on Eskom.
'One of those exceptional performers, from an improvement point of view, is Tutuka. So we've gotten back unit 1 2 3 4, and 5, that's exceptional. So now we take that station from an ICU. It's in a general ward, now it will work on its own, and then it starts running. When it starts running, the light will just be on and on and on.'
ALSO READ: Eskom adds more power to electricity grid as G20 summit approaches
Affordable electricity
Ramokgopa said that as South Africa marks nearly 90 days without load shedding, they want to make electricity affordable.
'The point is that when they are on, the lights must be affordable. That's the next question that is confronting us, and you know that in the immediate future, extension of Koeberg unit number two, we really want nuclear to perform that function.
'The base load is clean, it's reliable, it's efficient. From an operational efficiency point of view, we know that it's one of the cheapest sources of electricity when it's operational.'
'Within touching distance'
With the energy availability factor improving from 55% last year to 70% this year, Ramokgopa said the plants were maintaining a stable power supply.
'Moving in the right direction, we made the promise that we are going to address the situation. We have made the promise that we are confident of our technical ability to resolve what many thought was an intractable challenge. We are within that touching distance. So we are saying that the next phase that we are addressing is load reduction and the cost of electricity.'
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