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Electricity Minister Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa says the recent agreements with Chinese state-owned entities (SOEs) and a donation from China are aimed at addressing the country’s energy crisis and building its renewable energy capacity.

South Africa concluded a significant number of agreements with Chinese SOEs with the signing of two overarching memoranda that were witnessed by President Cyril Ramaphosa and President Xi Jinping.

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These agreements were signed during the 15th BRICS Summit hosted by South Africa last week.

Addressing the media on the Energy Action Plan on Sunday, Ramokgopa said that the two agreements include, among others, addressing issues of green energy solutions, the exploitation of renewable energy sources and the use of modern technology.

‘The two agreements – the first one addresses issues around green energy solutions – the partnership agreement will be entering in relation to the exploitation of renewable energy sources in our country; the use of modern technology and the degree to which we are able to connect renewable energy onto the grid,’ explained Ramokgopa in a statement.

‘The rationale for entering with the Chinese in this regard is because they are a dominant player in the renewable energy space. They have 688 gigawatts of installed capacity of renewables, a combination of PV and wind.

‘They have done one of the biggest expansions of transmission and they have also worked on the kind of transmission modernisation required to be able to accommodate the intermittency of renewable sources,’ added Ramokgopa.

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The second agreement – the donation from China – will support emergency energy needs in public facilities like police stations, health institutions and correctional centres.

The first shipment of technology solutions is en route, with further details on which public facilities will be the first to benefit to be announced upon arrival.

The minister expressed confidence in the stabilisation of the energy system following its agreements with some eight Chinese power companies last week, leading to lower stages of loadshedding as recovery progresses.

Commenting on loadshedding, Ramokgopa said the government was confident the system was stabilising and the country would continue to have lower stages of loadshedding as the system recovered.

‘On the issue of performance, we are more than satisfied. We have shown where we moved from a historic low of 48% of energy availability factor. We have been averaging 60% energy availability factor,’ the minister said.

‘When we went to the winter period, the worst-case scenario was Stage 8. We only had 30 hours of Stage 6. You can see the intensity of loadshedding is coming down. The issues of outage slips, I have shown to you, they have come down from a high of 3 300MW to 766MW.’

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Picture: @GovernmentZA / Twitter

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