WATCH: It’s not an electricity crisis, says energy minister Gwede Mantashe

Solving the energy crisis in the country is an ongoing challenge according to Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Gwede Mantashe.

The energy minister said there was a deliberate effort to ensure a steady supply of energy, despite critics.

Speaking at the signing ceremony of the first three successful bidders of the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme launched in April 2021, Mantashe said the country did not have an electricity crisis.

Based on his renewed outlook he said it was a base load crisis and not an electricity crisis.

“If baseload is corroded then there’s no repairing load shedding.”

The department was determined to reduce the usage of coal while increasing other sources of energy.

Watch the Minister in the hot seat below:

Rolling and prolonged blackouts continue to be implemented at Stage 5.

This will continue until 5am on Saturday morning.

Eskom will issue a statement on planned outages for the weekend with the week ahead expected to be considered.

Four generation units at Amot, Lethabo, Kendal and Majuba power stations were taken offline for emergency repairs.

“Eskom apologises for the continued and unfortunate load shedding, which is implemented only as a las resort in view of the shortage of generation capacity and the need to attend to breakdowns,” the power utility said.

Eskom said it was necessary to continue with Stage 5 loadshedding to limit the use of the emergency generation reserves.

“The emergency generation reserves are severely constrained by extensive utilization to supplement generation capacity.”

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