Cape Town - Minister of Electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has reiterated that it is unlikely that there will be a blackout in the country.
He said there measures were being taken to prevent the collapse of the grid.
This was also stated by President Cyril Ramaphosa when he appeared in Parliament on Thursday to answer oral questions from legislators.
Ramokgopa told the media on Friday that they had put in place measures to prevent that situation.
“I want to give assurance to the country and we will not tire to give this assurance that it’s highly unlikely that we are going to get to a situation of a blackout. Why is that is because the system operator maintains about 2 200MW of reserve margin. Essentially, it is meant to protect the grid,” said Ramokgopa.
He said South Africa was facing a tough winter.
However, Eskom has been given a war chest of R30 billion to procure diesel to run Open Cycle Gas Turbines.
This was an area that was going to help South Africa to get through this tough period.
Ramokgopa also said they will be looking at getting 400MW from Sasol and Kelvin power station in Johannesburg to help ease load shedding.
The government will also procure electricity from outside countries.
These are some of the measures that they are implementing to reduce load shedding.
He said when Ramaphosa announced his energy action plan last year, the energy availability factor was significantly better than what it is today.
Eskom told parliament this week that they want the energy availability to be 60% by March next year and to increase it to 70% by 2025.
Once that was achieved, the stages of load shedding would be significantly reduced.
Already the country has had more load shedding this year than any other time.
siyabonga.mkhwanazi@inl.co.za
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