Eskom grants South Africans load shedding reprieve ahead of Human Rights Day

The Human Rights Day load shedding schedule has been released, and it’s a nice one for South Africans this public holiday.

Eskom has announced that load shedding will be suspended at 5am on Thursday until further notice due to the lower demand anticipated and the increase in available generation capacity.

“The anticipated demand for this evening’s peak is 26 109MW, with unplanned outages at 14 335MW and planned maintenance at 6 073MW of generating capacity,” the power utility said.

“A total of 3 850MW of generating capacity is planned to return to service by Monday evening.”

Eskom added that it will communicate if any significant changes occur.

Meanwhile, the Minister of Electricity, Kgosietsho Ramokgopa, will be in Parliament on Thursday afternoon to respond to questions for an oral reply.

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“We will answer questions from Members of Parliament on a range of issues pertaining to the implementation of the Energy Action Plan and the short- to medium-term interventions to end load shedding,” the minister said on X (formerly Twitter).

Grid performance

Last week, speaking about grid performance and load shedding, Ramokgopa said if planned maintenance was reduced by between 25-50% from September 2023 to February 2024, load shedding could have been completely averted.

“However, this would have left the system vulnerable and weaker going into the winter period and beyond.”

Ramokgopa said the performance of Eskom is easy to measure.

“You simply do an analysis, the amount of hours my lights are on or off compared to the same period the previous year, and you’ll see without any shred of doubt there has been a significant improvement.”

“The point is not just to reduce load shedding; the point is to ultimately get rid of load shedding,” Ramokgopa said.

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He said he’s confident about the prospects going into the future, which include the reduction of the intensity and regularity of load shedding with long-term plans in place.

Additional reporting by: Faizel Patel