By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has acknowledged that the current load-shedding crisis is a “calamity of enormous proportions” but has backed Ministers Gwede Mantashe and Pravin Gordhan after the leader of the opposition asked why the two Ministers had not been dismissed.
This as the country has been gripped by load shedding with power stations unable, due to several factors, to produce enough energy to serve the needs of the country.
Ramaphosa was responding to questions for oral reply in the National Assembly on Thursday in Cape Town.
“Load shedding continues to happen to the detriment of our economy, the detriment of our people. Nobody in the country is happy with load shedding, including myself and we are working on it…from cable theft to criminality to the age of our power stations. All that has combined to land us where we are but we are addressing the problem.
Everybody is focused on it, the two ministers [Gordhan and Mantashe] are focused on it including the executives who have been put under tremendous pressure to address this.
“We are going to be making some announcements and we hope and trust and believe that that will then take us forward,” he said.
Ramaphosa emphasised that the current challenges facing the state power utility were not planned and that government has always believed that load shedding would be a thing of the past at this juncture.
“[Load shedding] has not been the wilful and clearly planned intention of anyone that I work with.
“Just two weeks ago, to have almost 50% of our electricity generation capacity just collapsing is not something that was planned by the Minister or the CEO. It is just something that happened and which we are dealing with.
“Almost two months ago when I announced…the broader plan that we have, we obviously did not foresee that we would lose 50% capacity. In fact, what we had wanted to do was to add more capacity and to repair and to maintain a fleet that we have. And yes, admittedly, some mistakes that we have made along the way,” he said.
Ramaphosa has also revealed that Eskom will require at least R33 billion to complete the commissioning and remedial work at the Medupi and Kusile power stations.
The two power stations have the potential to supply at least 4800MW of energy each to the grid.
“All six Medupi [generation] units have reached the stage of commercial operation and the current focus is on completing the balance of the plant and remedial works. Four out of six Kusile [generation] units are in commercial operation and the current focus is on completing the commissioning of the remaining two units.
“Eskom’s intention is to complete the remaining scope of work at Medupi and Kusile within the current project budgets approved by the current Eskom board,” he said.
Defects in the designs of both power stations have led to a delay in the completion of both and the President said these are being addressed.
“Eskom is making steady progress in developing and implementing effective technical solutions to the major technical defects at both power stations. As a result, the availability and reliability of the commissioned units at Medupi and Kusile is improving on an ongoing basis.
Eskom meanwhile has moved to clear up confusion around group CEO Andre de Ruyter’s warning of stage 15 load shedding.
De Ruyter cautioned over such an extreme stage while addressing the Africa Renewables Investment Summit in Cape Town on Wednesday (28 September) saying: “Stage 15 load shedding. I don’t want to know what that looks like”.
The chief executive was explaining the consequences to South Africa’s power grid if Eskom were to be forced to comply with minimum emissions standards, adding that on top of having to pull 16,000MW of power from the grid – equivalent to 15 stages of load shedding – 100,000 jobs would be lost.
The warning, however, sent alarm bells ringing across the country, given the current state of the grid, where stage 5 and stage 6 load shedding has been more frequent and persisting for longer than ever before.
Eskom said on Thursday that De Ruyter was merely using the example of load shedding stages to illustrate a wider point about the impact of the emission standards.
The group is under pressure to adhere to minimum emissions standards at its power stations and, in 2021, had applied to have the requirements and timelines attached to its compliance postponed.
The Department of Forestry, Fisheries and Environment rejected the applications, leaving the power utility in a precarious position. Eskom said it is in the process of appealing the decision.