Minister of Electricity and energy, Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, briefed the nation on the agenda of ending load shedding at GCIS, Tshedimosetso house on Thursday, September 25. He briefly mentioned the improvements on the energy availability factor, the increase of electricity subscription, the demand and supply, and combating illegal connections.
In 2023, the performance of the generation feed was below the demand with 48% resulting to power cuts however in recent updates it indicates growth above 70%. From 2007 to 2024, electricity has increased by nine hundred and thirty-seven percent compared to an inflation over the same period of time, that is an increase of about hundred and fifty-five percent, electricity is demanding a lot from households’ salaries more than groceries.
Dr Ramokgopa estimated a duration of 12 – 18 months of proper co-operation with various communities to end load shedding. Due to the high demand while there’s low supply of electricity, illegal connections from the grid is suspected because there’s only 1.69 million customers that are on Eskom’s data base in a country with a population of 64,01 million people.
