Minister of Electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has signed a deal with his Mozambican counterpart to help stabilise South Africa’s power grid.
Ramokgopa met with Carlos Zacarias, Mozambique’s Minister of Mineral Resources, at the Union Buildings on Monday and later confirmed that South Africa will get 100 megawatts (MW) from the neighbouring country.
“For now, we will get 100 megawatts and another 600 megawatts in six months’ time. We are very grateful to the people of Mozambique,” said Ramokgopa, noting that the new leadership at Eskom has made great strides in addressing the power crisis.
Meanwhile, Zacarias said Mozambique has identified more opportunities for the addition of power supply.
“Mozambique has enough power to supply electricity. We have a very big hydropower in the country. We also have new projects that are being developed,” said Zacarias.
He added that Mozambique has other sources of power, big sources of gas reserves and that a 450MW thermal station is being developed.
On Friday, Ramokgopa attributed the reduced stages of loadshedding to Eskom’s improved generation over the past week, saying demand is also lower than what was projected in Eskom’s winter plan.
Addressing a virtual media briefing on the implementation of the Energy Action Plan, Ramokgopa said government is making significant, yet marginal, progress in relation to the improvement of the plan, which intends to better the performance of Eskom’s power stations in order to ensure energy security.
He said there had been a reduction in unplanned losses to less than 16 000MW, from over 18 000MW. In addition, planned maintenance had been reduced to about 2 500MW.
“Generation available from wind power has increased due to weather conditions in the coastal regions. Peak demand is averaging less than 29 000MW, compared to 30 000MW projected in the first week of June.
“If we can keep up energy savings from demand-side measures, we can sustain this trend and reduce the severity of loadshedding,” Ramokgopa said at the time.
He emphasized that there is work under way aimed at reducing the levels of loadshedding.
“We want to sustain this performance and key to this performance are the Eskom units, so that they become reliable.”
Currently, Eskom is rolling loadshedding at stage three.
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