Electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa is playing fast and loose with the facts in saying that a reluctant SA was somehow forced to shut down Komati power station in Mpumalanga in 2022. He is also distorting the truth when he claims this shutdown deprived the country of 1,000MW (equal to one stage of load-shedding) of reliable power.
Speaking at a Standard Bank event on Monday, Ramokgopa said if he could have his way he would have Eskom restart Komati, “the best-performing power station at the time when we closed it”.
Almost 60 years old when it was finally shut down, the station had total installed capacity of 1,000MW, but at the time of shutdown in September last year its one remaining unit was contributing only 120MW.
The closure, he said, happened “because someone gave us money and told us to decarbonise”. If the minister is referring to SA’s $8.5bn Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) with developed countries, none of the funding is currently earmarked for Komati; the station’s phased shutdown is being funded by the World Bank.
Also, the decision to begin Komati’s shutdown was taken in 2017, about five years before the JETP was announced. At the time major failures were making it very expensive to keep the station going.
Five units were already turned off in 2018 as they reached the end of their operating life, which is a legislated requirement and in line with SA’s own Integrated Resources Plan of 2019.
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