SA transmission plan to be given to cabinet in October

South African Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said he will present a plan to the cabinet in October on how to fix and expand the country’s power-transmission grid.

The nation’s transmission and distribution infrastructure has been neglected and the government doesn’t have the money to fix and expand it, Ramokgopa said at a transmission seminar at the JSE’s head office in Johannesburg. The minister is seeking private capital to do so, he said.

The next bid window for the provision of additional electricity for the national grid from new power plants will be held by the end of October, Ramokgopa said. The last one partially failed because there was no power line capacity for many of the proposed sites.

South Africa’s economy is being hobbled by regular power outages because of insufficient generation capacity.