Page 6 - AfrElec Week 30 2022

AfrElec ESKOM AfrElec

Eskom welcomes Ramaphosa’s

strategy to boost energy security

SOUTH AFRICA SOUTH Africa state-owned electricity supply maintenance and others having unplanned
company Eskom has welcomed a government outages.
roadmap announced at the start of this week to Eskom, which cannot produce enough
ease the power shortage the country has been electricity due to antiquated plants and their
grappling with for some 14 years. frequent breakdowns, theft and vandalism of
The reforms aim to accelerate the end of load- infrastructure and scheduled maintenance, has
shedding (severe electricity rationing to prevent been strictly rationing electricity of late. Some
system collapse and ensure strategic users are areas are going for almost 10 hours without elec-
spared) and to expand and grow the electricity tricity. Businesses and households that wholly
generation industry in South Africa through rely on the national grid have been hardest hit
structural changes. as a result.
“Particularly pleasing to Eskom,” the utility The strategy, Ramaphosa said, seeks to
said in a release on Wednesday (July 27), “is improve the performance Eskom’s existing fleet
that the government has made these moves to of power stations, accelerate the procurement of
empower Eskom to speedily acquire additional new generation capacity, increase private invest-
generation capacity from existing independ- ment in generation capacity, enable businesses
ent power producer (IPP) with excess capacity, and households to invest in rooftop solar and
to acquire spares and equipment from origi- fundamentally transform the electricity sector
nal equipment manufacturers and indeed the and positioning it for future sustainability.
resources to increase the funding of the main- Eskom said in the statement that it will
tenance budget.” engage more engineers, boost the performance
President Cyril Ramaphosa unveiled the of its coal-fired fleet and invest in battery energy
measures as the power crisis in Africa’s most-de- storage systems.
veloped economy has been worsening over the “The measures announced by the President,
past few months. South Africa has installed particularly reforms removing limits to private
capacity to produce 46,000 MW of electric- sector investments in electricity generation
ity and at peak times it uses about 32,000 MW. capacity,” it said, “will help unlock investments
However, according to Ramaphosa, only 60% and help create jobs during the construction of
of this installed capacity is available at any given the projects while helping to lower the cost of
time due to some units going through planned electricity in the long term.”™

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