Lights will be on 24 hours a day: Ramokgopa

Electricity Minister, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, says they are working hard to ensure consistent power in the country.

Ramokgopa briefed the nation on the implementation of the Energy Action Plan today.

The plan was introduced by President Cyril Ramaphosa in July last year in a bid to deal with load shedding and to ensure energy security for the country in the future.

The Minister’s commitment to ending the crisis at Eskom comes as load shedding remains suspended for the whole of today, due to the continued good generation fleet performance and emergency reserves fully recovering.

The embattled power utility says load shedding is anticipated to return on Tuesday afternoon.

Ramokgopa says the maintenance outages aimed at reducing the tripping of generating units are beginning to bear fruit.

“I did indicate some time ago when we were experiencing heightened levels of load shedding Stage 6, that essentially what we are dealing with is short term pain which is going to result in long term gain and we are beginning to see the kinds of gains that I was referring to.”

Ramokgopa reiterated that the country has turned the corner in dealing with the electricity catastrophe.

“We have turned the corner, we are not yet there. When we are there, we’ll let you know that we are there. You won’t have to get any confirmation from me because the lights will be on 24 hours of the day and consecutive days – going into the future.”

The Minister announced that two Kusile units are expected to come back to service in the next two months.

Last week, Ramokgopa welcomed the return of Kusile unit 1 ahead of schedule.

He said the return of unit 1 continues to strengthen the stability of generation performance and adds 800MW into the national grid.

The Minister maintains that it’s possible for the country to come out of load shedding.

He adds that rooftop solar panels have also assisted in significantly reducing load shedding.

Ramokgopa says solar is becoming a critical feature in how South Africans will begin to see the energy landscape.