Quest to end power outages

RAMOKGOPA BACKS SA TO 'ELIMINATE LOAD SHEDDING FROM VOCABULARY' IN 2025

- Jarryd Westerdale

South Africa's energy generation situation is looking good, but the country must not "rest on its laurels". Electricity and Energy Kgosientsho Ramokgopa gave a confident reassurance during a briefing on energy generating capacity yesterday.

"We are thinking about tomorrow, we are thinking about the future. Don't rest on your laurels; we want to get to a point where we completely eliminate load shedding from our vocabulary," said Ramokgopa.

He said his highlight in 2024 was the reduction in the number of unplanned breakdowns at the country's power stations.

Ramokgopa said they had reduced lost generation capacity at any given time from 18 000 megawatts (MW) to 11 000 MW.

Eskom had previously said that should unplanned loss of generating capacity stay below 13 000 MW, then load shedding would remain suspended.

He also clarified that several power stations had been removed from the list of problematic stations and were now operating at a level deemed "efficient".

Ramokgopa had set an energy availability factor (EAP) target of 70%, which his department believes will offer the stability needed to grow the economy by up to 3.5% in the coming years.

"We are not celebrating the fact that we have not had load shedding for 272 days. We are simply marking the point in terms of our quest to end load shedding," he said.