We will not risk total grid collapse to avoid a few hours load-shedding — deputy president

3 years ago 2

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Deputy President Paul Mashatile has assured that the South African government will do its utmost to give Eskom the ability to increase its generation while ensuring that it doesn’t compromise the national power grid.

Mashatile was answering parliamentary questions during a National Assembly Plenary meeting on Thursday, 23 March 2022.

“I can assure you that everything has been done by Eskom and government together to ensure that we keep the lights on,” Mashatile said.

The deputy president was responding to a question from African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) member Steve Swart.

“Thank you, honourable Swart, for acknowledging that government is on the right track with interventions,” Mashatile responded.

“Our interventions are to ensure that we can reduce the challenges of load-shedding. We will do everything as government to ensure that there are no technical interventions that will result in us having the problem of load-shedding increasing.”

Swart raised concerns over whether an instruction was given to keep the lights on at all costs in response to the calls for a shutdown, which, if true, could place the national grid at risk of a total blackout.

The ACDP member’s main question asked about the technical interventions that were put in place to suspend load-shedding over the long weekend last week.

However, Swart’s question continued and raised concerns about a grid collapse.

Mashatile side-stepped the technical question to focus on the ACDP’s latter concerns.

Last week, South Africa’s newly-appointed electricity minister Kgosientso Ramokgopa said he is confident of Eskom’s ability to improve power plant performance and bring load-shedding under control.

The minister was responding to a question about what had changed from a month ago when Eskom warned about intense load-shedding this winter.

“I have engaged with the power station management and technical staff. The energy availability factor trendlines are up with an exponential improvement,” he said.

“I am not a typical politician with a suit having a general conversation. I am an engineer engaging in a robust technical discussion with other competent engineers.”

Brief load-shedding relief

Eskom managed to suspend load-shedding for the longest period since October 2022 over the weekend of Saturday, 18 March 2023.

The last time South Africa had seen more than 24 hours without load-shedding was 29 October 2022.

It previously only planned to suspend rotational power cuts for 11 hours on Sunday.

However, Eskom suspended load-shedding from 05:00 on Sunday until 05:00 on Monday, after which the country experienced a brief stint of stage 1 on Monday morning.

The power utility then suspended load-shedding again from 11:00 on Monday until 16:00 on Tuesday.

The 29-hour load-shedding break was the longest since the start of the year, with previous reprieves only lasting up to 11 hours.

Eskom also suspended load-shedding for eleven hours this past Sunday.