By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
State owned power utility Eskom has suspended load shedding from 05:00am on Wednesday morning, due to the recovery of sufficient emergency reserves.
“This decision follows the successful recovery of generation capacity and significant progress in replenishing emergency reserves. Although overnight replenishment is still needed, these developments will result in a stable power system,” the utility said in a statement on Tuesday evening.
After reaching Stage 6 on Sunday morning, the level of load shedding was reduced to Stage 2 at 05:00 on Tuesday morning following the recovery of several generation units at power stations that tripped over the weekend.
Initially, Stage 3 load shedding was implemented on Saturday when a trip at the Majuba power station in Mpumalanga triggered the shutdown of generation units. The Majuba trips also triggered an outage of a unit at Medupi in Limpopo, which took another 800MW offline.
The utility last instituted load shedding at the end of January. Before those cuts, South Africans had enjoyed 10 months of uninterrupted electricity supply.
“We maintain our guidance that load shedding is largely behind us due to structural improvements in the generation fleet, Eskom Group CEO Dan Marokane declared in a statement regarding the suspension of power cuts on Wednesday.
“Our focus remains on eliminating load shedding as a structural constraint on the economy,” said Marokane.
“There will be valuable lessons to be [learnt] from the set of multiple unit trips that were unconnected and purely technical in nature related to electrical and control system issues within auxiliary parts of our power stations,” he explained.
Meanwhile Electricity and Energy minister Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said the G20 Energy Transition Work Group will have its inaugural meeting this week to discuss the energy priorities that South Africa is seeking to place on the international agenda during its G20 presidency.
The meeting will take place virtually on February 27 and 28 and will be attended by senior officials from all G20 countries, including a senior official from the US Department of Energy.
Ramokgopa reports that South Africa has proposed three energy priorities, including:
- energy security and affordable, reliable access;
- Just, affordable and inclusive energy transitions; and
- African interconnectivity and energy pool.
He acknowledges that there could be disagreements on the priorities, particularly in relation to the so-called just energy transition (JET), which South Africa championed in the run up to the Glasgow COP in 2021, which culminated in the JET Partnership.
To date, some $13.8-billion in pledges have been made in support of South Africa’s JET implementation plan, including by the US.