President Cyril Ramaphosa has assured South Africans that government is doing everything within its means to ensure that rolling blackouts soon become a thing of the past.
In his weekly letter to the nation, Ramaphosa says this will be done through steadily addressing the problems at Eskom as well as building substantial new energy generation capacity.
It is difficult and unacceptable for South Africans to endure load-shedding. But we are doing everything in our means to ensure that, like state capture, it soon becomes a thing of the past. https://t.co/WHg16iT8tt pic.twitter.com/3w2OCIS42D
— Cyril Ramaphosa ?? (@CyrilRamaphosa) April 25, 2022
Ramaphosa says Eskom is forging ahead with its maintenance programme and correcting design defects at the Kusile and Medupi power plants. The power utility is also decommissioning old power stations that have reached the end of their design life and repurposing others to use cleaner energy sources.
Ramaphosa says the process is underway to bring on additional generation capacity through the Renewable Independent Power Producers programme revived in 2018.
He says more flexible licencing requirements are in place to enable the building of generation facilities by private investors.
Ramaphosa says the draft Electricity Regulation Amendment Bill is an important reform in that it provides for the establishment of an independent transmission and system operator which will allow competition among multiple generators selling to power distributors and customers.
The video below reports that Eskom continues to struggle with its aging power stations, economists raise concerns:
