Although daily outages of some 3,000 megawatts (MW) persist, there is already a steady improvement in the performance of the power plants of the national electricity company, Eskom, throughout the country, he said. Until recently, the planned outages reached 6,000 MW per day, corresponding to the so-called Stage 6.
What is important to keep in mind now, Ramokgopa added, is that we need to make sure generation far exceeds demand and thus be able to bring out a number of generating units for planned maintenance.
This is so that we can address the country’s growth-related issues as the South African economy continues to grow and recover, he added.
I want to give them the confidence that we are going to solve the electricity situation, it is an engineering problem, the Minister told the media in Pretoria while updating on the progress of the national Energy Action Plan.
Right now, he revealed, current available capacity is starting to stabilize at about 29,913 MW, compared to the country’s 28,664 MW at the end of June.
That amount, however, is still below the 34,000 planned for the winter season.
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