By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa says Mozambique will supply South Africa with 100 megawatts of power immediately and they are optimistic about their ability to reduce load shedding.
Ramokgopa met with Carlos Zacarias, Mozambique’s Minister of Mineral Resources, at the Union Buildings on Monday.
“For now, we will get 100 megawatts and another 600 megawatts in six months’ time. We are very grateful to the people of Mozambique,” said Ramokgopa.
A further 1 000 megawatts will be supplied in the long-term, he said at a briefing.
Zacarias said Mozambique has identified more opportunities for the addition of power supply.
“Mozambique has enough power to supply electricity. We have a very big hydropower in the country. We also have new projects that are being developed,” said Zacarias.
He added that Mozambique has other sources of power, big sources of gas reserves and that a 450MW thermal station is being developed.
Ramokgopa noted that the new leadership at Eskom has made great strides in addressing the power crisis.
Eskom suspended rolling power cuts until 16:00 on Monday after three generation units returned to service. Eskom, will then cut 3 000 megawatts of power from the grid from 16:00. until 12am. Monday through Wednesday, it said in a statement.
The chairman of beleaguered state power utility, Mpho Makwana said a change in its management structure has helped improve its plant performance, enabling blackouts to be eased, and further gains can be expected.
Over the past few weeks, the proportion of power Eskom could produce relative to its generating capacity has risen to 60.5%, compared with about 56% a year ago, Makwana said in an interview in Bloomberg’s Johannesburg bureau on Friday.
The improvement belied warnings that South Africa’s winter weather could see blackouts exceed previous records of as long as 12 hours a day earlier this year. The power cuts, which began in 2008, have hobbled South Africa’s economy and weakened the rand. The central bank estimates that the outages will shave 2 percentage points off the nation’s growth rate this year.