Electricity Minister confident government will fulfill Energy Action Plan promises

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Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa says government is on track to keep the promises it made with regards to the country’s Energy Action Plan.

Speaking in Pretoria at his weekly media update on the state of the national grid in light of the country’s energy crisis, Ramokgopa says over 50% of his department’s work is either complete or on track.

“For us that is a big positive, so about 8 of these actions that the president had set out in the Energy Action Plan we have completed those actions. 20 of these actions are on track which means that we are in keeping with the timelines that we have set for ourselves, the timelines that we made in public so we remain on track, if anything we would want to deliver much earlier than promised but the measure is around what was the initial timelines that we set for ourselves and how are we doing against those timelines.”

Importing power

Ramokgopa says South Africa is importing 400 megawatts of power from Mozambique.

In June, government resolved that Eskom should import power from neighbouring countries such as Zambia, through the southern African Power Pool arrangement.

South Africa is currently implementing between stage 1 and stage 3 rolling blackouts.

“We did make the point that we are making every effort to import additional capacity from neighbouring countries and additional 400 megawatts of power is already being imported from the Cahora Bassa in Mozambique, following the strengthening of the transmission line to South Africa.”

“I did make the point about the work that we are doing with Mozambique but this was a technical solution. As a result of strengthening those lines, we are able to get that 400 megawatts,” explains Ramokgopa.