Durban - Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has warned that the country is taking a hit over load shedding, with about R550 billion that is lost in the economy.
Ramokgopa, who will be presenting his report to Cabinet within the next few weeks, said hard choices would have to be made.
He said during his visit to 15 power stations a number of areas were identified that led to load shedding.
He said one of the things was to refurbish some of the old plants so that they could add megawatts to the grid.
The Medupi and Kusile power stations, if they were operating at full capacity, could provide the country with 9 600MW.
The other stations would provide more megawatts if they were fully serviced.
Ramokgopa, who was briefing the media on Thursday, said there was another key factor in dealing with the energy crisis.
“What we are not answering and I’m telling everyone is that in that computation it’s a one-dimensional approach to say life extension, what it costs. We will not be able to generate the amount of efficiency that is required.
“Answer the next question, which is the cost to the South African economy for not providing the kind of energy that is required and I have computed what that is. Essentially, we are talking about ... R550bn per annum of unserviced energy. There is a cost to the farmers. They do make the point that there is a relationship between food price inflation and load shedding.
“The South African Reserve Bank says the economy is barely growing because of load shedding. It’s a totality of all of this. It’s not just what is socially acceptable. People are out of jobs. There are families today that don’t know where to get their next meal as a result of, among others, load shedding,” said Ramokgopa.
He said he would table to the Cabinet his proposals to tackle the challenges he had identified.
The Cabinet would be seized with the options that he would put on the table and take a decision.
In the Cabinet he would indicate the hard choices to be made to ramp up generation and to balance that with the need to provide electricity to keep the economy going.
siyabonga.mkhwanazi@inl.co.za
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