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Interventions in place to relieve Eskom’s pressure on power grid: Mantashe

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Minerals and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe says various interventions have been put in place to relieve Eskom of energy supply pressure.

He was speaking in the National Assembly during an Economic Cluster oral reply session. Mantashe responded to a question by Freedom Front Plus MP, Wynand Boshoff on the progress made to allow independent power producers to freely feed electricity into the national grid.

Mantashe says the department has allowed municipalities to purchase their own electricity from their sources and encouraged self-generation to take the pressure out of the power grid.

“One of those is self-generation for own use. We are driving that energetically so that we take away pressure from the grid. Now  2,  we have allowed municipalities to purchase their own electricity from sources of their own choice. Thirdly, you would have noticed that over the last weekend, we issued the  request for proposals for the emergency purchases of electricity which is the 2000 MW emergency purchase, so all those interventions are directed at taking a lot of pressure from the Eskom grid and allow society and the economy to continue generating electricity and accessing electricity.”

Government issues request for proposals to procure emergency power

Government has issued a request for proposals to procure 2000 megawatts of emergency power.

The move is aimed at relieving a severe energy shortage as embattled Eskom struggles to keep the lights on due to among others its aging and poorly maintained infrastructure.

Last week, Eskom implemented stage 2 loadshedding due to unplanned breakdowns.

However, on Friday it suspended power outages but warned that the power grid remained vulnerable.

In December, government issued a request for information (RFI) to source up to 3000 megawatts (MW) of generation capacity.

Power supply contracts

In a statement, the Department of Energy says it expects all power supply contracts to be operational by July 2022 and that it expects to attract around R40 Billion in investment.

In February, Turkey’s Karpowership, one of the world’s largest suppliers of floating power plants, said it had submitted plans to provide “several” ships capable of alleviating the country’s power shortages.

The department says bidders would need to conform to South Africa’s policies designed to broaden economic participation for the black majority and to make commitments to job creation and skills development.

 In the video below, Eskom said last month, the renewable energy on the electricity grid is helping Eskom to keep the lights on.

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