Pretoria: Electricity and Energy Minister, Dr. Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, has expressed his optimism that the country is in for a load shedding-free winter, despite the implementation of load shedding this week. The Minister briefed the media in Pretoria on Wednesday on the status of electricity generation in the country, following Eskom’s announcement that load shedding would be implemented during evening peak over the next few days.
According to South African Government News Agency, the Minister explained that additional units have been synchronised to the grid since last winter, putting Eskom in a stronger position. “All of the things that we shared with the country regarding the winter outlook remain valid,” he stated. In the winter outlook, it was noted that winter 2025 is approached with more confidence than winter 2024, particularly with the synchronisation of Koeberg unit 2 on December 30, 2024. Additionally, Koeberg unit 1, currently on outage, is projected to return in July 2025, during the peak of winter. Furthermore, Kusile unit 6 was successfully synchronised to the grid in March, adding approximately 800MW of capacity.
The Minister also highlighted that Medupi’s unit 4 is expected to be operational this winter, unlike the previous year. “From a structural point of view, we’ve got 2500MW of additional capacity compared to 2024,” he added. This increase in capacity underpins the optimism for a load shedding-free winter or, at worst, stage 2 load shedding.
In a statement on Tuesday, Eskom explained that load shedding implementation was mainly due to two factors: the delayed return of generation units from planned maintenance, amounting to 3120MW, and an additional loss of 1385MW in unplanned breakdowns. These issues pushed the losses to over 13,000MW, surpassing the power utility’s threshold to avoid load shedding.
Dr. Ramokgopa noted that Eskom had announced plans to significantly reduce planned maintenance to better manage unplanned losses but had failed to do so, leading to the current situation. He emphasized the need for consequence management, stating, “We must ensure that we get the units back on track. They must generate the megawatts at the time we have made the promise because the resources were made available.”
The Minister offered his apologies, acknowledging that the issue is not related to the engineering performance of the units but rather the management of the situation. He mentioned engaging in difficult and candid conversations with the executive team to prevent future lapses.