President Cyril Ramaphosa has reiterated that they were busy addressing the energy crisis as the country is gripped by various stages of load shedding.
Ramaphosa told the NEC lekgotla in Gauteng on Sunday that while Eskom was fixing the energy problem, this would take time.
He said part of the immediate solution was to add thousands of megawatts from various players including renewable energy from the private sector and procuring excess power from neighbouring countries.
It has been indicated that government planned to add 9 000MW of renewable energy by the end of the year.
Ramaphosa also said load shedding has dampened investor confidence and affected businesses. Health and education sectors have also been reeling from continuous power cuts.
Eskom has been implementing rolling blackouts over the last few months.
Ramaphosa said attempts were being made to deal with the crisis.
“There are a number of areas where progress has been made. We addressed licensing challenges that would enable more megawatts to be brought online some time before the end of the year. In the past, where I have addressed our people, I have said one of the biggest challenges we have is that we have a shortfall of between 4 000MW to 6 000MW. It is for this reason that we have enabled a process of adding to the megawatts that are installed, adding them within our mixed energy resource architecture and many of these have been coming through renewables as we will outline,” said Ramaphosa.
He said they have signed purchase agreements that will add 2 800MW to the grid.
They will also procure 300MW from neighbouring countries with surplus energy and this will rise to 1 000MW.
Eskom will also be securing more megawatts from companies with excess energy.
He said these interventions were necessary to deal with load shedding.
‘These interventions will take some time and we must be honest with our people as we put Eskom right, yes we will continue to have some measure of load shedding.
“Our objective is to lower the stages of load shedding to the lowest level as we now enable Eskom to get on with the task that was neglected in the past, that is maintenance of our power stations,” said Ramaphosa.
He also denied that they will do away with coal-fired power stations when they implement just energy transition.
He said he has told world leaders that he interacted with they will continue with the coal-fired power stations.
US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen was in the country where she met with Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana where the issue of just energy transition was also discussed.
“Our energy architecture comrades is 80% coal-fired power stations. There has been a legend or a story that we have moved towards closing coal-fired power stations and I have personally made it clear to some of those world leaders we have interacted with that there is just no way we will close those power stations, Medupi, Kusile and others just like that,” said Ramaphosa.
He said the power stations had a lifespan of 40 years.
But those that have reached the end of their lifespan will be repurposed.
siyabonga.mkhwanazi@inl.co.za
Current Affairs