Measures in place to prevent nationwide blackout
State power utility, Eskom, has moved to assure South Africans that there is no imminent collapse of the power grid. This after social media posts claimed that the country is facing a looming complete blackout.
“Eskom refutes these claims and would like to assure South Africans that there are measures in place to avoid the collapse of the power system. Load shedding is one of these mechanisms.
“The risk of a national blackout, while inherent to the operation of a large power system, has an extremely low likelihood of materialising, given the implementation of a number of control measures, including load shedding.
“The grid is by no means at a higher or imminent risk of a collapse, and it would take an unforeseen and sudden sequence of events that results in a cascading collapse of the transmission or generation system, leading to a complete loss of supply across the country,” the power utility said.
The electricity provider emphasised that there are “robust contingency plans in place to deal with such an eventuality”.
“At the Enlit Africa conference… Interim GCE Calib Cassim reiterated that there are several controls in place… [There are] staff at the System Operator, who have the competence to manage the tight system.
“Eskom continues to drive generation recovery initiatives that are aimed at preventing the current performance from deteriorating in the short-term, and improving the overall performance of the generation fleet in the long-term,” the power utility said.
Open bid to procure additional renewable energy
Mineral Resources and Energy Minister, Gwede Mantashe, on Tuesday told Parliament that government will open a bid in July to procure additional renewable energy.
Mantashe, who was delivering his Budget Vote speech for the 2023/24 financial year, said Bid Windows 7 and 8 will each give 5 000 megawatts (MW) of renewable energy.
“The requests for proposals for the procurement of this capacity will be issued to the market in the second and fourth quarter of this financial year respectively.”
In addition, he said the second and fourth quarters will see further requests for proposals for the procurement of battery storage with a capacity totalling 1 230MW.
In addition, according to Mantashe, a request for proposals for the procurement of gas-to-power, totalling 3 000MW, will be issued in the second quarter.
A bid for proposals for the procurement of 2 500MW of nuclear energy will be open in the fourth quarter.
To narrow the electricity supply and demand gap, Mantashe said his team would present an updated Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) to Cabinet soon.
The Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) 2019 – the country’s blueprint policy for electricity generation – is currently under review.
“We intend to present the draft to Cabinet in the second quarter of this financial year. Whilst this review is underway, we continue to procure additional electricity informed by the existing policy,” Mantashe said.