South Africa’s power utility Eskom has warned of more electricity outages over the next few weeks as President Cyril Ramaphosa assured the nation of his government’s plans to restore the generation system.
In a statement on Monday, Eskom told South Africans to brace for more electricity shortages for the foreseeable future as its generation capacity is expected to remain constrained “over the next few weeks”.
“It will take a few weeks for the power generation system to recover,” Eskom said.
According to the utility, its generation system was down by more than 20,000 megawatts, comprising 4,597MW on planned maintenance and a further 16,457MW that is unavailable due to breakdowns.
In his weekly message to the nation, Ramaphosa put the generation capacity lost due to plant breakdowns and a recent strike by Eskom employees to 18,000MW.
He admitted that load-shedding had in the past two weeks disrupted the economy and caused extreme hardship for everyone in the country.
This had brought outrage and frustration among residents towards load-shedding which has been a reality for more than a decade in the country, the president said.
“At times like these, it can feel like there is no end in sight. But while load-shedding appears to worsen, the reality is that we have already taken several important actions to address the shortfall in electricity supply,” he said.
Ramaphosa cited the salary agreement between Eskom and labour unions as one such initiative by his government to ensure an end to electricity woes, saying he was sure that this would enable critical repairs to be done and return the disabled units to operation.
The transmission line from Mozambique had been restored, effectively adding 600 megawatts to the power grid and the return of Medupi Power Station to service at the weekend have further eased the shortfall, he said.
“As the system recovers and generation capacity is restored, Eskom will be able to reduce load-shedding to lower stages,” Ramaphosa said.
He added: “At the same time, law enforcement agencies are working hard to tackle sabotage, theft and fraud at Eskom to address the threat these criminal actions pose to the electricity system.”
NM/jn/APA