South Africa will need to balance contentious issues if it wants to escape load shedding – and time is running out.
Minister of Electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa says that South Africa has to make some difficult choices if it wants to get rid of load shedding – and may need to rethink its haste in decommissioning Eskom’s ageing coal power stations.
Eskom has an embedded generation capacity of around 48,000MW, it is currently only able to reliably produce 27,000MW. Meanwhile, summer demand reaches around 32,000MW and can stretch up to 37,000MW in winter. Another challenging discussion is around slowing down the country’s rapid move away from coal and instead focusing on refurbishing units at older stations and drawing out improved performance by investing in surroundings assets – like the coal mines.
This is a discussion that has not been had, Ramokgopa said, because any stage of load shedding is not acceptable. Broadly, the coal fleet faces three key issues: people issues, design issues and investment issues, he said.
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