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**SayPro Public Enterprise assures South Africans that energy stability is foremost on its agenda

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by

Zamatungwa Mnguni
in

The Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) regrets the latest development in the implementation of loadshedding.

“We are deeply mindful and concerned of the strain that this places on households and businesses in the country,” said Minister Pravin Gordhan.  Eskom operational challenges remain an issue and concern for the country. We fully understand the frustrations of citizens due to the high stages of loadshedding. Loadshedding was caused by the unplanned breakdown of units and unit trips.

The unit trips are mainly part of power stations protection system to safeguard the power stations employees and equipment.  Loadshedding must be recognized as disastrous for households, business and the economy. Loadshedding is implemented as a last resort in view of the shortage of generation capacity, and the need to attend to breakdowns.

The Department – has been working around the clock closely with Eskom to ensure that units are returned to service, adding much needed megawatts to the national grid.  “We have mobilized the full resources of our teams together with Eskom to address this immediate challenge of loadshedding. We are alive to the fact that loadshedding impacts on households, businesses and disrupts daily lives of South Africans.  “All efforts are directed towards returning megawatts lost due to unplanned breakdowns and outages.” said Minister Gordhan.

The Minister has been meeting with the Board and management of Eskom to implement the immediate solutions to ensure the current generation fleet provides reliable electricity to the country.

Some of the interventions include:

  • The approval for the emergency procurement of 1000 MW from Independent Power Producers and Industrial co-generators. This demonstrates the impact of cutting the red tape and getting approvals within hours instead of months and bringing in new capacity within 2 months at the very least.
  • Additionally, Eskom has the go-ahead to procure over 200 MW from the Southern African Power Pool, as part of our immediate solutions to our energy shortfall.
  • To ensure reliable maintenance of plants, Eskom has recruited former experienced employees and energy experts who responded to our call to assist Eskom and are now hard at work at different power stations to mentor Eskom employees and assist in the execution of the plant operations.
  • In the past week alone 18 seasoned energy specialists in power plant operations – some with over 20 years of experience – have re-entered the Eskom system to assist with operations.
  • Through the work of the National Energy Crisis Committee (NECOM), our sister Department, DMRE has initiated a process to procure additional megawatts from the markets through bid window 5 and 6.

The Department as part of the NECOM has visited a number of power stations to assess the full extent of their challenges in order to identify short-to-long term interventions for implementation.

“This information will further assist the implementation of the energy actions as announced by the President in July 2022 and the work of the energy crisis committee is already at an advanced stage,” said Minister Gordhan.