Staff Writer
An enthusiastic cabinet minister indicated on Sunday that the devastating electrical blackouts in South Africa would end sooner than anticipated since power generation is being increased.
Every day scheduled blackouts, or load-shedding, are implemented by the state energy company Eskom to protect the grid whenever demand exceeds supply because of underperforming power plants.
These began at a relatively low level about 15 years ago, but they escalated to disastrous levels last year, depriving consumers of electricity for up to a total of 12 hours each day. However, in recent weeks, the number of disruptions has substantially decreased to just a few hours every day.
Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa told reporters in Pretoria on Sunday, “We will end load-shedding.”
“I believe we will find a solution much more quickly than we had anticipated. Without providing a specific date, he remarked, “The date is on the horizon.
He said that in order to increase output at the worst-performing power plants, more than 100 best generation professionals from Eskom, the government, and the private sector had been mobilized.
According to him, demand has also decreased as consumers turned off superfluous equipment to conserve energy.
According to him, the peak winter demand, which was expected to be 34,000 megawatts, has fallen to 30,000 megawatts.
Many South Africans who had become accustomed to the frequent outages have been prompted by power shortages to look for alternative energy sources, such putting rooftop solar panels in their homes.
