Eskom to suspend load shedding at 8pm on Friday

Eskom has announced that it will suspend load shedding at 8pm on Friday evening.

Briefing the media on Friday afternoon, CEO Andre de Ruyter said there had been some “improvements” in the generation capacity, and that several units that had problems during the week had come back to service.

“We have seen a positive recovery on the system, we have managed to recover our reserves very well,” he says.

According to the power utility’s COO Jan Oberholzer, there will be no be load shedding next week.

“That is how we see it, however, I put it on the table again unfortunately that we have a constrained system , some of the units and some of the power stations remain extremely unpredictable and unreliable. So, we trust that we will not have any unforeseen breakdowns,” he said.

Oberholzer said while there was no indication of sabotage, there was negligence by colleagues who did not respond to problems on time.

No load shedding on election day

Briefing the media on Wednesday evening, Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan said load shedding would be suspended going into the weekend, assuring South Africans they would not be voting in the dark.

There will be no load shedding on Monday when the country takes to the polls, he said.

“Load shedding will stop over the weekend and there will be no load shedding from Monday unless an unexpected event happens,” said Gordhan.

“Elections will not be distracted in any way, contingent measures have been put in place to ensure that.”

Eskom supplies power to 16,000 of the 23,148 voting stations across the country, and the IEC has made available 14,000 lighting equipment to stations outside the Eskom supply areas.

There will also be generators on standby at the voting stations, said Gordhan.

The scanners for voting are all precharged and have a 12-hour battery life.