Durban — At least 10 000 youth will be trained in the manufacturing of solar panels/geysers during the current financial year.
This was revealed by KZN Premier Nomusa Dube-Ncube during an engagement with business stakeholders at the Durban Exhibition Centre.
The engagement was hosted by Electricity Minister Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa on energy challenges and interventions.
“There's a plan to train around 10 000 youth in the manufacturing of solar panels/geysers. We hope to implement this plan within this current financial year,” said Dube-Ncube.
She said with the country’s energy sector facing significant challenges which have implications for businesses, households, and the economy at large, the engagement aims to provide an opportunity for stakeholders to share their perspectives on the energy challenges businesses face in the region.
Dube-Ncube added that they invited the Minister of Electricity to try to combat load shedding in the province.
“As you heard from the minister, the Richard’s Bay IDZ -- the contribution that we'll be bringing in -- would actually assist the whole country in ending load shedding," she said.
Dube-Ncube outlined how much impact load shedding has had on the economy.
"The jobs we have created have surpassed the jobs we have lost during Covid-19 but if you look at the numbers from Stats SA, if it were not for load shedding, more jobs would have been created."
She praised President Cyril Ramaphosa's State of The Nation Address as he placed emphasis on load shedding's impact and that interventions are being made to tackle it.
Ramokgopa said the purpose of engaging with businesses was to share with them the finer details of the work that the ministry is doing to tackle load shedding.
He acknowledged that it has had a major impact on businesses and their productivity. The engagement was also an opportunity for businesses to canvas their ideas on how to tackle the national load shedding crisis, he said.
"The commitment we have made is that we'll meet with the sugarcane industry to have a full appreciation and see how we can work with them and their contributions to much-needed megawatts and the diversification of the energy mix."
Ramokgopa said that when speaking to the public, it's important to be more precise and deliberate regarding when to expect the megawatts.
"The Medupi 4 and the interim solutions that will come in September; Kusile Unit 6 -- the last of the remaining units- are going to come again in November. We're expecting Koeberg Unit 2 to come/arrive in September. Together, that's 2500 megawatts."
He said that even ahead of that, there is work being done to tackle demand that includes the accelerated rollout of rooftop solar solutions and expressed confidence that they would make a significant impact.
From mid-March or end of March, he said, they will be able to recover 2000 megawatts as a number of generator units had been out due to planned maintenance.
"There's also work that we are doing on the conversion of Kariega and Ankerlig from diesel open-cycled gas turbine to gas being the fuel source."
He said they would be speaking to the likes of PetroSA and others within that ecosystem to ensure that they can guarantee a fuel source -- gas in this instance.
"The ones I was mentioning are the ones sitting with Eskom directly as part of the coal fleet. Our target is 1000 and I'm confident we can achieve this within the next four months," he said.
Ramokgopa mentioned three requirements for success on the renewable side of energy generation:
“Firstly, land as anything above 50mw requires it. Secondly, grid access. When you generate these megawatts, you must be able to connect them to the grids so you're able to use them."
He said Eskom has both of these but what they don't have is a strong balance sheet to finance that. Here, Ramokgopa encouraged the private sector to bring the money as the other two factors of land and grid access were being provided by Eskom.
Regarding load shedding, he said additional generational capacity is required for the economy to grow and to support the growth required.
"You'll get to a stage of no load shedding, but once it isn't there, there will be a flurry of investment into the SA economy. We will still need additional generation capacity."
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