Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa says he is confident that once emergency reserves are stabilised, the intensity of load shedding will go down at least by the weekend. Ramokgopa was addressing the media during the handing over of 450 gasoline generators donated by the People’s Republic of China. The official handover was at Pietermaritzburg in the Midlands of KwaZulu-Natal.
The generators will be distributed to public service facilities nationally. This happens at a time when the country is battling rolling blackouts. Ramokgopa elaborates, “The fact that there was a significant depletion of our emergency reserves, the reserves have recovered and we have seen that we have lowered the degree and the intensity of load shedding. One of the things that has been a bright spark is we have been able to return the units much earlier in the midst of stage 6 has come back to give us an additional 800 megawatts. Once we stabilise emergency reserves, I am more than confident that going into the weekends we will start to see that the intervals of load shedding will start to go down.”
Ramokgopa says government is working hard to seek other alternatives to end load shedding.
“As we resolve the bigger question of ending load shedding. You need some alternative supply or if you like some solution that will ensure that there is uninterrupted supply and on the sidelines of the BRICS when the President signed a number of agreements with South Africa and China and one of those to assist South Africa is emergency power solutions.
Source: eNCA