Electricity Supply in South Africa Improved in June

By Xinhua 

July 3, 2023

The power supply in South Africa improved in June with the time of rolling blackouts in the month becoming much shorter than in the previous months of the year.

In June, load-shedding implemented by the Eskom, the country’s power utility, maintained at stage 3 level on average, meaning that there was only 2.5 hours without electricity in a day. In the first five months, blackout reached up to more than 10 hours in a day.

The government has been in the process of implementing long-term solutions to the energy crisis, Minister of Electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said Sunday when briefing the media on the energy situation in the country.

In the last five days, electricity shortages have significantly declined by over 50 percent of what was experienced in previous months, Ramokgopa said.

“Generation is beginning to keep up with demand. We hit a demand on June 28 at 31,000 MW, but now we are beginning to plateau at 29,000 MW. At the moment we are averaging 1,503 MW a day on outage slips, down from about 4,000 MW in May,” the minister said.

Ramokgopa said that the focus now is on removing bottlenecks in the transmission grid as the government has signed agreements with independent power producers who will add more energy to the grid.