Ramokgopa confident intensity of rolling blackouts will reduce

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Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa says he is confident that once the emergency reserves are stabilised, the intensity of load shedding will be reduced going into the weekend.

He addressed the media during the handing over of 450 gasoline generators donated by the People’s Republic of China.

The official handover was in Pietermaritzburg in the Midlands of KwaZulu-Natal.

These generators will be distributed to public service facilities nationally.

This happens at a time when the country is battling rolling blackouts.

Ramokgopa says, “The fact that there was a significant depletion of our emergency reserves, the reserves have recovered and we have seen that we have lowered the degree and the intensity of load shedding.”

“One of the things that have been a bright spark is [that] we have been able to return the units much earlier in the midst of stage six … to give us an additional 800 megawatts. Once we stabilise emergency reserves, I am more than confident that going into the weekends, we will start to see that the intensity of load shedding will start to go down,” he adds.

Ramokgopa says government is working hard to seek other alternatives to end rolling blackouts.

Eskom is currently implementing between stages three and four load shedding until further notice.

“As we resolve the bigger question of ending load shedding, you need some alternative supply, or if you like some solution that will ensure that there is uninterrupted supply. On the sidelines of BRICS when the President was here, we signed a number of agreements with South Africa and China and one of those [was] to assist South Africa … emergency power solution.”

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