[miningmx.com] – SOUTH African energy minister, Dipuo Peters, has urged South Africans to cut electricity consumption between 10% and 15% in order to avoid a repeat of blackouts that crippled the mining sector in 2008, reports Bloomberg News.
The newswire, citing Peters, also said the energy minister was supportive of penalties for contractors who failed to deliver work on time at Eskom’s 4,800MW Medupi power station projects in Mpumalanga province.
Alstom, Europe’s second biggest power equipment manufacturer, has said it needs more time to complete work on the project. There have been problems reported with some of the weldings on boilers manufactured by another contractor, Hitachi.
“Eskom has the right to take the most appropriate arrangement,’ Bloomberg cited Peters as having said. “If you don’t deliver there must be penalties. I would support that,’ she said.
Commenting on Eskom’s wafer-thin reserve margin – currently at 1.5% which was the level before load-shedding was implemented in 2008 – Peter said: “”South Africans are starting to realize that we need to use energy efficiently’.
State-owned utility Eskom may be able to avoid blackouts with reduced consumption, but only with the cooperation of consumers, she said.
