JOHANNESBURG - Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has apologised for the recent increase in blackouts.
He blames it on a drop in generating capacity coinciding with bad weather in Gauteng.
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Ramokgopa says charging inverter batteries puts more strain on the grid.
"When you have inclement weather, when you have a situation as we experienced on Tuesday and Wednesday, we had parts of Gauteng experiencing snow, and of course when you're given those conditions, you know that you are starved of the sun, essentially you have cloudy conditions and therefore you're not getting the privilege of getting support from you PV solar," he said.
"So what that means is that those who have taken the self-initiative of ensuring that they install solar panels, batteries and inverters, they also had to draw from the grid.
"And in addition to that they also had to draw from the grid to charge their batteries and of course what that means is an elevated level of demand."