Ramokgopa: No link between elections and no load-shedding

• Published date: 06 May 2024
• Publication title: Mail & Guardian: Web Edition Articles (Johannesburg, South Africa)

Ramokgopa told a media briefing that the ability to avoid load-shedding was also because of maintenance last year as well as lower peak-time demands

"What we know is that the unplanned capacity loss factor is tracking at about 29% as of April 2024, as opposed to 34% of April 2023. So we have recovered, in percentage terms, five percentage points over this year's April compared to last year's April," he said.

The unplanned capability loss factor refers to unplanned loss of energy as a result of generating units not functioning well or at all.

"You do not earn and recover that five percentage points suddenly because the date of the elections has been announced," Ramokgopa said, adding that credit was due to the staff at Eskom.

"When the team were making these efforts, when we ramped up planned maintenance in December and January, little did we know that there would be a big date with ballots," he said.

"This is a result of process mapping, in engineering terms, the stabilisation of management ensuring that we use and deploy this fiscal injection received from the national treasury, identifying candidate stations that can give us the best returns in a short space of time."

"There is no correlation between this performance and the date of the 29th of May," he reiterated.

Some sceptics have suggested that Eskom has been able to keep the lights on by burning more diesel because the governing ANC is worried that implementing load-shedding in the run up to the elections would hurt its chances with voters.

But Ramokgopa debunked these allegations, saying the utility has only relied on maintenance. He added that Eskom expects to use less diesel in this financial...