Government to release a report outlining the work done to improve Eskom’s power stations.

By Lehlohonolo Lehana.

President Cyril Ramaphosa says Eskom and government is making “significant progress” in areas aimed at reducing load shedding and eventually ending it altogether.

Ramaphosa was addressing the nation through his weekly newsletter on Monday.

“We will be releasing a detailed report outlining the work done to improve the performance of Eskom’s power stations, accelerate the building of new generation capacity and drive regulatory reforms to transform the electricity sector.

Eskom’s generation fleet continues to show sustained improvement. Unplanned losses have been reduced to less than 16,000MW in the past two months, down from more than 18,000MW previously,” he said.

“The winter months will soon be coming to an end. Although load shedding has continued, as was anticipated, we have managed to avert a worst case scenario by stabilising the performance of Eskom’s power stations and reducing demand, “Ramaphosa said.

He explained that the power utility is hard at work to address challenges at power stations.

“Looking ahead, damaged units at the Kusile and Medupi power stations are being returned to service on an expedited basis. In combination, these units represent more than 3 000MW of capacity.

“The Eskom debt relief package announced by the Minister of Finance will enable necessary investment in maintenance and expansion of the transmission network,” he said.

“We are fast-tracking the procurement of new generation capacity from renewables, gas and battery storage. Later this year the first three projects from the emergency power programme are expected to connect to the grid,” he said.

In addition, the president said about 2,300MW from the most recent bid windows of the renewable energy independent power producer programme should be in construction.

“One of the most important contributions to the energy action plan has been the uptake by households and businesses of rooftop solar,” he said.

Ramaphosa noted it was encouraging to see more municipalities are allowing customers to feed electricity into the grid when they have surplus power, saying this will provide another incentive for businesses to invest in alternative energy sources.

“Regulatory changes have helped to boost private investment in new generation capacity. These changes include the removal of the licensing threshold for generation facilities and the fast-tracking of project approvals and registration,” he said. 

The president commended the work done to enable a boom in private investment in electricity generation, with a pipeline of more than 10,000MW of new capacity that will begin to connect to the grid later this year.
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