Energy expert dismisses Ramokgopa’s reasons behind lower load shedding stages

Energy expert Matthew Cruise says that the reason for recent lower stages of rolling blackouts is mainly because of a decrease in energy demand rather than an increase in generation capacity by power utility Eskom.

This after Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said South Africa will survive this winter thanks to a huge improvement in power generation.

He said on Saturday, that power generation at Eskom had been ramped up to 60%, from just 48% a few weeks ago.

Cruise says that South Africa has almost 5 000 megawatts less demand this winter, compared to last year.

“From my view, not so much an increasing of the generation from Eskom’s side, we’ve actually seen more of a decreasing in the demand over winter compared to previous years. We usually have a peak demand in winter of about 34 000 megawatts to 32 000 megawatts, you have an increase in wintertime. This winter however, our demand is sitting at about 28 000, 29 000 megawatts. So, we’ve got four to five thousand megawatts less this winter, than we did last winter. If that had to be on the grid, as demand right now then we’d actually be looking at stage 7 this evening, cause we’re going into stage 3 this evening.”

VIDEO | Power generation at 60% from 48%:

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