Electricity Minister admits that load shedding cannot be solved in the foreseeable future

In a recent briefing to the Western Cape Provincial Parliament, Electricity Minister Ramokgopa conceded that the ANC has no solution to the ongoing issue of loadshedding.

Despite claiming some recent progress, the admission implied through Ramakgopa’s statement that the challenges of power outages, escalating living costs, and job losses will persist indefinitely.

Minister Ramokgopa was candid about the economic toll of loadshedding, revealing that it costs the South African GDP up to R899 million daily, impacting millions facing unemployment in what is now a contracting economy.

While claiming ongoing expansion of generation and transmission capacity, the Minister highlighted the re-entry into service of Kusile Power Station’s Unit 2 and Unit 5, along with Medupi Unit 4, scheduled for early 2024. However, he conceded that the predicted capacity of 32,200 MW by May 2024 is still insufficient.

With South Africa’s power stations theoretically capable of generating 50,000 MW when fully operational, nearly half of the capacity remains unusable, leading to an expectation of continued blackouts into 2024 and beyond, especially since the demand for electricity is even greater than this maximum capacity.

DA Western Cape Spokesperson on Energy, Christopher Fry gave the following quote:

“While I thank the Minister for his briefing and his work, it is clear that the ANC has no plan in place to decisively deal with loadshedding. With nearly a billion Rand bleeding from our economy every single day due to blackouts, incremental and occasional increases to generating capacity simply do not cut it. Unfortunately, it seems that blackouts will persist as long as the ANC does.”

This follows the Electricity Minister’s recent statement that new power cannot be added to the Cape grid without curtailment procedures, as the grid does not have the capacity to carry new sources of power generation.

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