South Africa: No Daytime Load Shedding and Eskom Secures Additional Capacity

12 June 2023
Scrolla (Johannesburg)
By Zukile Majova

Eskom has entered week two of reduced daytime load shedding or no daytime load shedding at all.

This is thanks, in part, to the return to service of various generating units which was delayed by a complicated system of purchasing parts to maintain or service units.

Additionally, power supply stability is also expected to improve with the confirmation that Eskom has secured an additional 700 MW from Mozambique.

Minister of Electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa hosted his Mozambique counterpart Energy Minister Carlos Zacarias who confirmed that 100 MW was immediately available.

"It's important to get additional power onto the grid and we are grateful to Minister Zacarias and the people of Mozambique for strengthening the relationships," said Ramokgopa."

We are getting this additional 100 MW now and 600 MW in six months time and, of course, an additional 1000 MW in the longer term," he said.

He said the current reprieve from high stages of load shedding was a result of various interventions including a change in personnel at Eskom's power generation wing.

Ramokgopa applauded the appointment of Bheki Nxumalo as Group Executive Generation in April.Minister Zacarias said Mozambique has huge gas reserves and can assist South Africa negotiate its way out of its energy predicaments.

Eskom said it did not expect any load shedding between midnight and 4 pm on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and Stage 3pm between 4pm and midnight on those days.

"This is due to a continued improvement in generation capacity as a result of three units that were previously on outage being returned to service," Eskom said in a statement.

Meanwhile, The French government has committed Ꞓ1 billion (R20 billion) to fund South Africa's Just Energy Transition which is designed to reduce the country's heavy reliance on coal-fired power stations.Minister Ramokgopa conducted a site visit on Monday to the Redstone Concentrated Solar Power Plant in Postmasburg.

The concentrated solar power (CSP) project is a 100MW integrated CSP plant being developed in South Africa.

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