JOHANNESBURG - Six months of focused maintenance from Eskom's management should be enough time to address South Africa's energy crisis.
That's according to Energy Minister, Gwede Mantashe.
But the CSIR disagrees.
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According to their research, even if generation was increased, the country's electricity grid simply could not handle it.
"What we've been seeing is that there's been a lot of investment and a lot of emphasis on getting renewable energy on to the grid," said the CSIR's Monique le Roux.
"But unfortunately those energy and resources -- good wind resources, good solar resources -- are located in provinces, for instance, the Northern Cape, Western Cape, Eastern Cape where there isn't a lot of demand.
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"The resources are sitting there but you don't have great infrastructure to get that power out of those areas... back to the north of the country where there's a high-load demand.
"So what we're sitting with at the moment is that those lines that carry the power from the south of the country where the good wind resource is has been completely utilised so that we're running at full capacity
"So it is impossible to add any generation operation to serve load in the north of the country."