ELECTRICITY Minister Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa says they have a solution to return the units that have failed.
He said they must procure a second-hand generator from the Netherlands that has 15 years left and is already on its way to Mzansi.
Ramokgopa said this when he was briefing the media in Tshwane on Tuesday, 23 January, on the implementation of the Energy Action Plan.
The minister said they're expecting it to be delivered in the country on 24 February and that’s when the ensemble will commence.
He said they are expecting to return the said unit by August.
“Essentially, we will have an additional 800 megawatts this year. I'm making this point so that there’s a full appreciation that outside new generation capacity, we are doing everything possible to return the units that have failed especially at Medupe power station,” said Ramokgopa.
Giving feedback on some of the developments, Ramokgopa said there’s tremendous progress about solutions on the transmission side.
He said challenges on the transmission side are almost equivalent to the ones on the generation side and that if they are not resolved immediately, they're likely to be even more disastrous compared to the challenges on the generation side.
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“In this regard to transmission, I’m referring to the degree to which we are able to onboard the new generation capacity especially that which comes from renewable energy developers in the country, there’s about 2 000 megawatts of unlocated capacity as a result of constraints on the transmission side.
“As President Cyril Ramaphosa has announced last week, we've been given a responsibility to ensure that we go out to the market to procure the financing in relation to the transmission side. That area of work has to be aligned with the work that Eskom is doing without undermining or compromising the unbundling process, so it is important that in whatever we do, we don’t risk that unbundling exercise. We will be completing our discussion with the newly constituted board of Eskom on the transmission side,” he said.
Ramokgopa said they are not waiting for a crisis to confront them.
"We are going to address that situation immediately and this is in support of Eskom’s work that they are already doing.
“The Integrated Resources Plan 23 (IRP) that requires public consultation does flag the issues on transmission as a risk and that is why it is important that we are able to provide for additional capacity that is required especially in the Cape provinces," he said.
