South Africa’s Minister for Electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, says the transmission financing project is currently at an advanced stage and will be presented in the next cabinet sitting.
He said the transmission financing seeks to source additional funding beyond Eskom’s balance sheet and the treasury.
According to him, this is important because for the transmission division to be accelerated, it would need about R390 billion.
“We know that for us to be able to accelerate the rollout, the expansion, and the strengthening of transmission, we need anything upwards of R390 billion.
Like I said, the financing facility that has been made available within the context of the jet IP will be part of the totality of the resources that are available to help us address the requirements on the transmission, and of course we’ll expand the flow of those sources to go beyond what the international partner groups are offering,” he said as quoted by Sabcnews.com
Minister Ramokgopa said power cuts have been ramped up in order to replenish emergency generation reserves, which have been depleted faster than expected due to further breakdowns of some generating units.
Eskom says that Stage 3 load shedding is expected until 5 a.m. tomorrow morning.
He says at least five units are expected to return to service tonight.
“From November 13 to November 17, the capacity was still significantly lower.
On account of unplanned capacity loss, the rate of failure of these units have been a bit more acute.
We do expect that units will fail from time to time, but we will ensure that we are able to address that. If we had not experienced that, we would not see the kind of intensity of load shedding that we are experiencing”, he said.
Source:sabcnews.com