Over the past year, South Africa's power sector has achieved significant results. According to Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, Minister of Electricity in the Presidency, Eskom power stations will reduce power load shedding by approximately 600 hours between December 2023 and January 2024 compared with the same period last year. This result was achieved thanks to a series of targeted interventions.
Ramokgopa noted that between January 2023 and January 2024, South Africa successfully restored 3,510 MW of electricity generation capacity. Although these measures have not achieved complete results, they have achieved obvious results. During this period, a significant amount of additional work was carried out at Tutuka Power Station, and improvements were continued at other power stations such as Kendall and Matra.
Taking December 2022 to February 2023 as an example, South Africa experienced approximately 1,800 hours of power curtailment and load shedding. However, just one year later, from December 2023 to February 2024, this number dropped to approximately 1,200 hours. This means that South Africa has successfully reduced the time of power curtailment and load shedding by about 600 hours, showing that our country is moving in the right direction in solving power problems.
Despite this achievement, Minister Ramokgopa still believes that any form of power curtailment and load shedding is "unacceptable". He said that power rationing and load shedding have become a daily phenomenon, so the South African government hopes to gradually reduce the intensity and duration of power rationing and load shedding.