Responding to the overall performance of the South African power system, the country’s Minister of Power, Ramaphosa, stated in a media briefing on the 9th that the South African power system has shown significant improvement. South African citizens will pass through this winter smoothly without encountering the “worst-case scenario.”
Since the beginning of the year, the South African power system has continued to deteriorate, and at the beginning of the year, it declared a “national disaster” due to frequent load shedding. In June, Ramaphosa stated that South Africa could face an “extremely difficult” winter due to insufficient power supply.
Fortunately, with resource allocation and anti-corruption efforts, the situation of the state power company in South Africa has started to improve. The electricity generation capacity has increased from 48% to the current 60%, and the average daily load shedding duration for citizens has been significantly reduced from 12 hours to around 2 hours. Regarding this, Ramaphosa analyzed that a group of South Africa’s best power generation experts have been deployed to the worst-performing power stations, becoming the most critical factor. “The electricity generation from these power stations far exceeds our expectations,” he said.
Ramaphosa said that as the operational condition of the state power company in South Africa gradually stabilizes, the power system will continue to improve until large-scale load shedding measures are completely ended. “We are certain that we will not experience the worst-case scenario,” revealed Ramaphosa. He also stated that the peak electricity demand in South Africa this winter is expected to be 34,000 megawatts and the highest power generation capacity of the state power company has been restored to 30,000 megawatts.
Ramaphosa stated that the South African government is confident in ending large-scale nationwide load shedding measures as soon as possible, and the power system will no longer hinder the overall economic development of the country.
