By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The embattled power utility,Eskom said load shedding would be suspended from 8 pm on Friday,easing frustrations among South Africans.
Briefing the media a short while ago, COO Jan Oberholzer says there have been some improvements in the generation capacity, which has allowed its generation reserves ahead of the weekend.
Oberholzer said that he was confident that election day, and the counting process thereafter, would not be affected by load shedding.
However,he warned that the power system is still constrained, and some units are “extremely unpredictable and unreliable”.
“There may be some breakdowns. We hope that the election that will be free of load shedding. But we do still have some risk.”
The power utility adjusted the load shedding schedule to stage two from 5am this morning.
Meanwhile President Cyril Ramaphosa says South Africa is not the only country with power problems, and even affluent countries like the US have issues.
Speaking to the media at an ANC event on Thursday afternoon, Ramaphosa said that government knows exactly why the country’s energy generation is at a low ebb.
“As I was addressing the crowds here, we are not the only country – even the mighty United States of America, their most affluent state of California, has gone through years of problems of energy generation.”
“We have come up with a grand solution which is in the process of being implemented. We now need to restructure Eskom to allow (independent) power generators to also generate power. It is a weakness to have one company having an absolute monopoly.”
Ramaphosa said that the government’s plan would see multiple energy generators providing power to a transmission company owned by the government.
“The solution is there; we are going to solve this problem. On the way to solving it more permanently, we are going to have hiccups and ups and downs. That is what we will need to live with, and Eskom itself has said that we will live with power shortages and outages for quite a while as they put things right.
“The good thing is that there are generators coming on stream, and we will be announcing another bid window. We have a number of balls in the air, and I am determined that we get it right.”
On Thursday evening, Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe announced 25 preferred bidders selected in the fifth round of the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP).
Mantashe said that the latest round aims to provide around 2,600MW of additional power to South Africa’s grid. However, he noted that the first of these projects is only likely to come online in around three years times.