South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has announced big plan to increase Eskom’s capacity by more than 30 per cent in electricity supply after many years of power outage and load-shedding.
In his weekly address to the nation, Ramaphosa has gazetted ministerial determinations that would add more than 118000MW power generation to the roughly 30000MW available electricity to the national grid.
“As government, we have decided that to grow our economy and attract investment, sustainable energy supply is paramount. It is, therefore, vital that we significantly and speedily increase our electricity generation capacity,” the President said.
According to him, the new energy would be procured from diverse sources including solar, wind, gas coal and storage.
“While meeting our energy needs well into the future, this new capacity will also help us meet our international obligations to reduce carbon emissions.
“In an effort to facilitate electricity self-generation and as part of the reform process, government has removed the licensing requirement for self-generation projects under 1MW. So far, 156 self-generation facilities under 1MW have been registered with a total installed capacity of 72MW,” he said.
Ramaphosa had earlier tweeted “As we begin the long and difficult recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, we can draw encouragement, confidence and hope from the measures we are taking now to address our immediate electricity challenges and secure our energy supply well into the future. https://bit.ly/2S3QuNJ”
