Ramokgopa and Eskom provide reasons behind Stage 6 blackouts

TSHWANE - Electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa and Eskom executives have come out to explain why rolling blackouts shot up to stage six.

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Ramokgopa says the power utility has to intensify blackouts because they cannot call on the emergency reserves.

The minister says the emergency reserves had already been overcommitted when generation slumped due to a series of failures.

He said, "what explains this, what explain this is the fact that we had overcommitted our reserves for purposes of protecting the grid, we continue to protect the reserves, so we are not going to engage them at a heightened intensity, and as a result you don't have the benefit of that 4600MW that we would ordinarily draw from our emergency reserves."

"Remember its 2300 of pump storage and there's also open cycle gas turbines of about 1332, so we don't have that benefit and as a result of that it calls for the intensification of load shedding."