Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter said power cuts should start easing within the next ten days when big generation units are expected to come back online. 

The state utility ramped up power rationing to 4 000 MW from 18:00 Tuesday until further notice due to generation trips at its Kendal and Lethabo plants and has imposed a record 120 days of blackouts so far in 2022.

“We are doing everything possible to add MW to the grid,” De Ruyter told Johannesburg-based Radio Sonder Grense. “We have started buying power from Zambia, and we are looking at Mozambique and the private sector to add megawatts.”

The private sector has a total of 6 000 MW of new renewable projects in the pipeline, he said. Those projects were targeted after President Cyril Ramaphosa in July said companies will be allowed to build power plants of any size without a licence to meet their own needs and to sell it to the grid.

De Ruyter said it will probably take another 18 to 24 months for that capacity to come onto the network.

Chairman Mpho Makwana said the company’s newly appointed board will retain the power utility’s management for the time being, as the South African company conducts an assessment of its power plants.

Makwana, who was named along with most of the new board last week, said the plants’ performance will be reviewed over the next 30 to 60 days to ascertain how to make them operational at an average of 75% of the time - a target set by Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan. Their so-called electricity availability factor, a measure of when they can produce electricity, is currently less than 60%. 

Meanwhile, Anglo American and Electricite de France agreed to form jointly owned Envusa Energy to develop wind and solar projects in South Africa.

In a first step, Envusa will develop more than 600 MW of wind and solar projects in the energy-starved nation, the companies said in a statement on Tuesday. Funding will include debt-financing and construction is expected to begin next year.