Eskom to buy more power from Mozambique

South Africa’s Cabinet has given the green light to electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa’s plan to import enough electricity from Mozambique to deal with at least one stage of load-shedding.

Minister in the presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni last week said the power purchase agreement between South Africa and Mozambique was one of the issues deliberated on during the Cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

This comes a week after Ramokgopa travelled to Maputo to meet with the Mozambican mineral resources and energy minister, Carlos Zacarias, to discuss the additional sale of power from Mozambique to South Africa.

Ntshavheni said the Cabinet welcomed the recent deliberations between Ramokgopa and Zacarias to secure additional power from Mozambique to support South Africa’s national grid.

“In the immediate term, Mozambique can provide 80MW and a further 1 000MW over the medium term,” Ntshavheni said.

An additional 1 000MW would mean that Eskom could lessen its load-shedding by at least one stage, bringing some relief to businesses and households.

South Africa currently has a 6 000MW electricity deficit, forcing state-owned power utility Eskom to implement up to Stage 6 rotational load-shedding to prevent the national grid collapsing.

As part of measures to plug this gap, the government resolved that Eskom should import power from neighbouring countries in southern Africa, such as Botswana and Zambia, through the Southern African Power Pool arrangement.

South Africa is the main buyer of power from the Cahora Bassa Dam on the Zambezi River, buying about 1 400MW in a contract valid until 2029.

Eskom, however, has dragged its feet on negotiating to purchase more Mozambican hydro power.

Two major electricity generating projects: a second power station at Cahora Bassa, and a new dam at Mphanda Nkua, 60km downstream from Cahora Bassa – have been delayed by decades because of the lack of a firm buyer for the electricity they would produce.

Mozambicans feel that Eskom was the obvious buyer, but until the current South African energy crisis, it has not shown much interest in buying more power from Mozambique.

Investec chief economist Anabel Bishop said South Africa was slowly making progress on the electricity crisis, with Ramokgopa implementing a number of measures such as seeking a special dispensation for Eskom to cut out the middleman, and procuring directly from original equipment manufacturers.
– IOL News