Eskom suspends load shedding … for now

Eskom has suspended load shedding from 11:30am until 4pm on Monday.

The embattled power utility’s spokesperson Daphne Mokwena said the suspension of rolling blackouts is a result of improvement generation in the electricity generation system.

“This includes the full recovery in emergency generation reserves. Eskom will publish another update this afternoon,” Mokwena said.

Lack of maintenance

Last week, Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said Eskom was losing hundreds of thousands of megawatts of electricity due to a lack of consistent maintenance at some of its power stations.

The minister said the historical lack of maintenance of electricity infrastructure resulted in the underperformance of some power stations which could be adding capacity to the electricity grid.

“Significant amount of opportunity is giving us an EAF (Energy Availability Factor) of 40% and we know we can do significantly better because those units are big units and 40% really is an injustice on what the team is capable of achieving.”

Ramokgopa also said the historical backlog was having a serious impact on the grid.

“Part of the underperformance we are seeing is a function of historic reasons. Historic in this instance I’m referring to Eskom’s inability to invest in the maintenance.”

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Brics load shedding

Ramokgopa said Johannesburg will get no special treatment from Eskom when it hosts the 15^th Brics Summit this week.

“Johannesburg will be expected if there is load shedding on the day to make its contribution to ensuring we protect the grid. How they allocate, they will make that determination.

“So, if you happen not to see load shedding on the day it might be two things. We don’t have load shedding across Eskom, or it could be they are not on schedule to be load shed,” Ramokgopa said.

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