Power system is stable but threat of outages remain – Eskom
JOBURG - South Africa’s power grid is stable and no load shedding is underway or forecast at this stage, but Eskom cannot rule out further outages.
Eskom’s spokesperson Andrew Etzinger said despite the power system being currently stable, he could not guarantee that South Africans were out of the dark just yet.
“The system will remain constrained during December,” he said. “The demand for electricity will be lower but we will be doing more maintenance, so the reserve margin will remain lower than we need.”
Etzinger said the forced outages this past weekend were a pre-emptive measure which allowed the power utility to make a substantial recovery of contingency reserves and assisted it to start the week well.
However, the possibly of load shedding remained high towards the end of the week, he said. “Coming weeks will be constrained but load shedding will hopefully be avoided.”
Eskom has been under strain in recent weeks because of maintenance, diesel shortages and bad weather.
Etzinger reiterated the power utility’s ongoing call to the public to reduce their energy consumption.
“Load shedding is avoidable. We need business and the public to please switch off all non-essential appliances and equipment. If we all switch off a little, we will make a big difference collectively,” he said.
