South Africa’s Minister of Mines and Energy, Gwede Mantashe, said during the presentation of his department’s budget to Parliament that the limited capacity of the electricity network hinders the use of alternative energy sources, which contributes to the worsening energy crisis.
In this sense, Mr. Mantashe explained that the use of renewable energies is blocked by constraints related to the national grid, which constitutes a great challenge to mitigate the energy crisis.
In an attempt to address the energy crisis that has plagued South Africa for several months, due to blackouts that have plagued the country’s power generation capacity, the government has attempted to increase the cap on unlicensed power generation from 1 MW to 100 MW, in addition to tendering for supply from independent power producers, including renewable energy.
However, Mantashe pointed out that of the 4,200 megawatts purchased under the government’s wind power tenders, 3,200 megawatts cannot be used because of Eskom’s grid capacity limitations.
The energy crisis affecting South Africa is caused by aging power generation units. These power outages caused by recurrent blackouts are costing the economy some $50 million a day in lost generation, according to government statistics.