Eskom is burning less diesel than anticipated to keep the lights on this winter because of improved generation capacity, electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said yesterday.
The country has experienced low load-shedding levels in the past few weeks despite warnings of a possible countrywide blackout a few months ago.
“The improvements are not artificial, the energy availability factor has improved,” Ramokgopa told reporters on the sidelines of an ANC national executive committee meeting.
“We have also not been burning diesel at the rates we thought we would, even in the midst of winter — we have been able to save the Eskom fiscus some money.”
Part of the improvement was the continuous identification of technical issues that hamper generating units from producing electricity at the designed capacity, he said.
“Once we have isolated what the issues are, we find and deploy the expertise. That is why you are seeing improvements.
“The best measure is on the performance of those units; as long as we are able to maintain them at 60% plus we will be able to provide relief. We are surpassing our expectations in relation to the performance of the units.
“We have lifted the energy availability factor by 12 percentage points — one percentage point amounts to 477MW of additional generation capacity — that is why we are attaining average levels that are just shy of 30,000MW.
“That is why about two-thirds of the day we are not experiencing load-shedding or ... we are able to keep it in stage 1 and then to 3. We are succeeding in maintaining those levels of efficiency.” .
Ramokgopa said the country was unlikely to see higher stages of load-shedding, even though Eskom was continuing with maintenance that required units to be shut down.
Once we have isolated what the issues are, we find and deploy the expertise
— Electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa
He was confident that load-shedding would eventually be a thing of the past and Eskom would be able to create a buffer margin to allow the economy to grow.
Meanwhile, the head of the ANC's economic transformation committee, Mmamoloko Kubayi, said the government would never negotiate with the construction mafia when they disrupt projects.
Kubayi, who is minister of human settlements & public works, was reacting to KwaZulu-Natal MEC for public works Sipho Nkosi's planned meeting with a construction cartel that has disrupted a school project worth about R40m in Umlazi.
“We have called for law enforcement agencies to deal with criminal activities. We condemn acts of disruption of projects because they deny infrastructure development. We can never encourage negotiations, this is a major issue, we continue to raise it with the security cluster.”
Kubayi said Nkosi's comments did not deviate from government policy as he was not seeking to negotiate with law breakers but sought to understand problems that had led to delays at that particular site.
“The issues around localisation are legitimate,” she said. “Most of the time when a big contract has been awarded, local SMMEs come in to benefit in terms of the value chain and there will be local employment. The aim was to ascertain the issue, but as government we can't encourage negotiations with people who go to sites and demand a percentage of money without even lifting a finger.”
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.