With winter approaching, Parliament’s energy committee concerned about recent power cuts

CAPE TOWN - The chairperson of Parliament’s energy and electricity portfolio committee has raised concerns over Eskom’s recent move back to load shedding as winter approaches.

Committee chairperson, Nonkosi Mvana, also wants the country’s nuclear build programme to be closely monitored as Eskom works on improving the country’s energy security.

Mvana and other social services cluster committee chairpersons briefed the media in Parliament on Monday about issues affecting the sector, from electricity to housing and water.

The briefing by Mvana came as Eskom announced its winter power system outlook, which states that load shedding is expected to be avoided provided unplanned maintenance remains below 13GW.

But Mvana said the recent return of load shedding after such a lengthy period was cause for concern for the committee.

But she acknowledged that the recent stage two outages were because of a loss of generation at Koeberg and Kusile.

"Recently, we also experienced stage two load shedding. We, as the committee, are concerned about this backlog, or backtracking. However, we should be mindful of the fact that we have aging coal power stations that require constant maintenance."

Mvana said that in response to energy security challenges, the committee conducted oversight visits to Kusile and Koeberg.

She said another frustration for the committee was cable theft but the committee would continue monitoring the problem until a solution was found.