President Cyril Ramaphosa on Monday reassured South Africans that his government was committed to reducing the severity of the blackouts on households and businesses, with six power stations identified over the next few months to recover additional capacity.Addressing the nation in his weekly newsletter, Ramaphosa said Eskom was working to connect Kusile Unit 5 to the national grid by September this year.

And efforts were in place to restore other units at Medupi, Kusile and Koeberg power stations, he said.

The president also said Eskom had imported 300 MW of capacity from neighbouring countries, with negotiations under way to secure an additional 1,000 MW and to buy surplus power from companies with available generation capacity for a period of three years.

According to him, his government had signed agreements for 25 projects from bid windows 5 and 6 of the renewable energy programme representing 2,800 megawatts of new capacity.

A team of independent experts was conducting a diagnosis of the problems at poorly performing power stations in the country and was taking action to improve plant performance, he added.

These efforts follow the country’s reeling from the severity of Stage 6 load-shedding recently and was now shuttling between different stages of power supplies, with currently on Stage 3.

Meanwhile, Ramaphosa has appealed to Eskom to delay the implementation of its 18.65% tariff increase, saying the rise in power costs would hurt consumers.