City Power retracts announcement of just two hours load shedding a day

City Power has made an about-turn on plans to roll out a highly reduced load-shedding schedule to customers and businesses.

The regional power utility issued a statement four hours after the first one which allowed residents a reprieve from severe load shedding imposed by Eskom ahead of winter.

The erroneous statement announced that City Power had unveiled a plan that will see areas it served getting power cuts for a maximum of two hours out of 24, during stages 1-7 of load-shedding.

Error

However, City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said the first media statement was a working draft that was sent erroneously.

“City Power would like to retract the recent media statement sent earlier today [Thursday] regarding the implementation of its revised load-shedding schedule which is intended to reduce the frequency of blackouts and ensure minimal disruption to our customers.

“The correct final statement will be released tomorrow after consultations with other stakeholders have been completed, Mangena said.

Grim winter

Meanwhile, Eskom has painted a difficult and grim winter for South Africans with stage 8 load shedding likely on the cards.

This is according to Acting Eskom CEO Calib Cassim who was speaking at the state of the system media briefing on Thursday.

Cassim stated that this year’s winter period would be difficult because of the 3 000MW reduced generation capacity compared to last year’s winter season.

ALSO READ: ‘Stage 8 load shedding likely in winter’ – Eskom

Stage 8

This is as a result of three units at Kusile and one Koeberg unit breaking down.

“If the interventions that we have planned for the winter do not achieve the desired outcomes and your unplanned outages reaches levels of 18 000MW, then the likelihood of stage 8 load shedding during peaks is extremely high.”

Stage 16

During the briefing, Eskom also said there was “work in progress” to revise the load shedding stages to stage 16.

“In terms of the approved standard, we currently stop at stage 8. There is work in progress in parallel to revise that standard to extend it to stage 16, the parastatal’s chief transmission executive, Segomoco Scheppers said

“We are not planning to go stage 16. What we are saying is in terms of preparedness, in the event there is a requirement to move to higher stages of load shedding, we believe it is important that there be proper schedules so that the public and customers can know what to expect in the event we get there,” he added.

ALSO READ: Eskom working on revising load shedding stages up to 16