Power utility, Eskom is confident that it will be able to keep the lights on as cold weather conditions persist.
“Electricity demand is expected to rise sharply over the next few days due to the cold weather conditions and Eskom has adequate power supply to meet the demand,” said Eskom in a statement.
“In addition, we have not utilised our open cycle gas turbines (OCGT) for the past 25 days. The OCGT load factor year-to-date is 0.27 per cent, against a target of 2 per cent, with no diesel usage over the past weekend. This equates to a total cost of R93.35-million this financial year, against the budget of R963.85-million. As part of our drive to continually save costs through efficiencies and minimal use of our OCGTs we are certainly moving in the right direction.”
• Municipalities owe Eskom R4,6 billion
Eskom has not implemented load shedding in over 11 months.
Customers in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu Natal may be experiencing outages due to the inclement weather conditions. Several roads were closed which has prevented staff from accessing some of the networks.
Eskom personnel have been working around the clock to determine the extent of the damage and to bring the lines back to service in the accessible areas. Customers in the affected areas are advised to treat all installations as live for safety reasons.
“We urge customer across the nation to continue to use electricity efficiently in order to reduce pressure on the power grid,” said Eskom.
