WE'RE getting our power back.
These were the words of President Cyril Ramaphosa during an update on the Energy Action Plan on Monday, 31 July.
Ramaphosa praised his government for avoiding higher stages of load shedding and said significant progress had been made in several areas since the launch of the energy plan.
He said that Eskom's generation fleet continues to show sustained improvement and unplanned losses have been reduced to less than 16 000MW in the last two months, down from more than 18 000MW previously.
He pointed out that planned maintenance has been reduced during the winter period because Eskom had done major maintenance before that.
Although load shedding continues, government managed to "avert a worst-case scenario" by stabilising the performance of Eskom's power stations and reducing demand.
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"To ensure that we never experience power shortages again, we are implementing fundamental reforms to create a competitive electricity market and an independent national grid operator," said Rampahosa.
The president said that work has been done since the launch of the Energy Action Plan to add as much power as possible to the grid.
"Eskom has unlocked close to 400MW from companies with extra available capacity and a further 600MW is currently in the contracting process. We have sourced an additional 400MW from Cahora Bassa in Mozambique," he said.
Ramaphosa said that damaged units at Kusile and Medupi Power Stations were urgently being returned to service, and these units represent more than 3 000MW of capacity.
"We are fast-tracking the procurement of new generation capacity from renewables, gas and battery storage. Later this year, the first three projects from the emergency power programme are expected to connect to the grid. Also later this year, around 2 300MW from the most recent bid windows of the renewable energy independent power producer programme should be in construction," he said.
Ramaphosa said that regulatory changes have helped to boost private investment in new generation capacity.
"This work has enabled a massive boom in private investment in electricity generation, with a pipeline of more than 10 000MW of new capacity that will begin to connect to the grid later this year," he said.
The president said that load shedding will not be resolved overnight, adding that progress was being made to bring it to an end.
