High risk of load shedding this week due to cold weather – Eskom

Eskom has asked South Africans to use electricity sparingly this week as the colder weather will increase the demand for electricity.

As a result, the power system is expected to be “tight”.

“The winter plan indicates a higher demand, with three days being extremely tight, with a high risk of load shedding.”

Phakamani Hadebe, the group chief executive of Eskom, said: “We have done an extensive winter plan and review of our power system and identified the problems. While the plan gives us confidence that we may go through winter with no or limited loadshedding, we are mindful of the potential of risks on a very tight power system which may result in shifts on the power system and which could result in loadshedding.

“We have mapped out scenarios that show that we will implement loadshedding in cases where unplanned breakdowns increase to more than 9,500MW, delays in returning units from planned maintenance or in cases of unanticipated disruptive events.”

The power utility, however, said it managed to maintain the power system for three days last week even though the demand was high, proving the winter plan to be effective.

“We promise to keep our customers informed about the state of our power system on a continuous basis. We also appeal to South Africans to continue using electricity sparingly as we count on getting up to 500 MW savings from demand management. It was encouraging to see that South Africans’ response to switch off their lights during Earth Hour on 30 March 2019 yielded savings of 554 MW so we have shown that it can be done.”

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