President Cyril Ramaphosa said the cost of the power outages was significant and would make potential investors uneasy at a time South Africa was trying to attract more domestic and foreign capital.
Johannesburg – South Africa’s main electricity provider Eskom said on Friday its system had made significant progress towards full recovery after severe supply constraints last week.
The state-owned utility implemented rotational blackouts last week to avoid tripping the national grid, which it said had come under pressure due to the failure of some generating units.
On Monday President Cyril Ramaphosa said the cost of the power outages was significant and would make potential investors uneasy at a time South Africa was trying to attract more domestic and foreign capital.
On Friday Eskom said high levels of unplanned breakdowns exceeding 10 500 MW had forced it to implement load-shedding until Saturday.
“While the generating plant performance has improved, the plant continues to remain vulnerable and any unexpected shift such as an increase in unplanned breakdowns could result in load-shedding at short notice,” it warned.
“Recovery teams continue to work hard to return units and improve generation and operational performance to further stabilise the power system.”
African News Agency/ANA
