Electricity Minister Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa says Eskom will place the country on load shedding between stages 3 and 4 for the rest of the week.
The country was plunged into Stage 6 load shedding for the most part of last week, due to power stations maintenance and a number of power units tripping, including Dhuva.
Briefing the media in Pretoria on Sunday, Ramokgopa claims that planned maintenance was a priority.
“We are going to do things the right way, we are going to fix these units, we are going to place to good use the fiscal support that has been given to us by national treasury. Like I said, it’s a short term pain for long term gain. We do make the point that Kusile sits on a critical path, it gives us a path to ending load shedding.”
The Minister has sought to assure the nation of lower stages of load shedding going into the week which he says can be attributed to additional generation recovery and lower demand.
Ramokgopa says while challenges have been experienced at other stations, it is commendable that Tutuka contributed to the energy supply by moving from one unit-on-load to four units-on-load in this period.
He says three units are on track to return between 10 to 11 September something that will see lower stages of load shedding this week.
“The week that we came out of we ramped up maintenance and the units tripped and the only instrument we had was to intensify load shedding, those units have come up the ones that had tripped the others they still remain on planned maintenance scheduled to come back up so it’s important that we appreciate that if we postpone maintenance we don’t do the right things we are simply perpetuating this legacy. This units are going to collapse, they will fail abruptly and we sit with a much bigger problem.”
