‘No capacity to prevent Stage 8’

Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has admitted that Eskom does not have the necessary generation capacity to save South Africans from Stage 8 load shedding this winter.

This comes as Eskom warned that the rising demand for electricity because of the cold winter weather could see it implementing an unprecedented Stage 8 load shedding, if unplanned breakdowns should increase.

Ramokgopa yesterday went back to visit Kusile power station in Mpumalanga to receive a report, as well as inspect the repairs and construction project taking place there.

At least three of the power station’s units are offline due to a flue gas duct (chimney) failure which occurred in October, costing Eskom at least 2 400MW in generation capacity, while another unit has also been taken offline.

Ramokgopa said Kusile is a critical part to easing the load shedding crisis and the four units would have eased power cuts by at least three stages.

However, three units were only expected to be brought back online from November 28, and December 11 and 24.

Kusile is one of Eskom’s two new power stations but has been plagued by design flaws that will cost a further R14 billion to finalise construction, taking the overall building cost to a moerse R175bn since 2007.

Ramokgopa conceded he could not rule out the possibility of higher stages of load shedding in winter.

“I am saying this reluctantly, because load shedding … is devastating to the economy. It will be very irresponsible of me to declare by decree there will be no Stage 8.”

Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s SA strategist, John Morris, said it had helped that Eskom dealt with fears of a national blackout.

“Grid collapse fears have eased. If it did [collapse], consensus says it would take one or two weeks to restart,” Morris said.

[email protected]