Minister of Electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa says that he is"very, very worried" that the Koeberg refurbishment is behind schedule, which will result in higher stages of load shedding continuing into 2024.
I've asked for a more detailed report, and the more we get an indication of what the issues are, the more we are getting very, very, very worried. It is something that requires urgent attention. Once we have an overlap of unit 1 not coming on stream and unit 2 having to be taken out, the net picture will be that from where we are now, we will have lost 920MW.
The licence for Koeberg to continue operating expires in July 2024, after which it must close unless the plant has been successfully refurbished and relicensed. The outage of unit 1 eventually began in January and was expected to be completed by July. Unit 2 was expected to go on outage in September. This unit 1 deadline has already been delayed until September, with Ramokgopa's comments indicating this will have to be extended again.