Cabinet has acknowledged the frustration of South Africans as the country continues to experience power outages.

Addressing media on Thursday following Cabinet’s meeting this week, acting Minister in the Presidency, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, said the outages were due to failures in Eskom’s infrastructure electricity networks.

South Africans have, since last Monday, been contending with load shedding.

She said Cabinet remained committed to the implementation of the Integrated Resource Plan 2030, which is based on a diversified energy mix that will reduce reliance on a single or a few primary energy sources.

“The DMRE [Department of Mineral Resources and Energy] has also opened bid window five of the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme to procure 2 600 megawatts of wind and solar power to support the National Grid.”

The Minister said electricity regulation reforms have also enabled municipalities with the capacity to purchase their own power from other alternative power producers.

“This will alleviate pressure from the Eskom power grid.”

Source: South African Government News Agency