Load shedding has been suspended until 4pm. Picture: iStock
South Africans will have a little more power on Tuesday, after Eskom suspended load shedding from 9am until 4pm.
Eskom spoksperson Daphne Mokwena said the suspension of the power cuts was due to the improved available generation capacity.
“Breakdowns significantly reduced to 13 577MW of generation capacity, load shedding will be suspended at 09:00 today until 16:00.
“Thereafter, Stage 3 load shedding will resume as previously communicated from 16:00 until 05:00 on Wednesday. Eskom is closely monitoring the system performance and will communicate a further update this afternoon,” Mokwena said.
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On Sunday, electricity minister Kgosientso Ramokgopa reported a slight improvement in the national grid following a week of severe load shedding.
Ramokgopa gave update on the implementation of the Energy Action Plan (EAP) after a week of stage 5 and 6 power cuts.
The electricity minister also confirmed the return of Unit 4 at Kusile power station on Sunday morning that was put on planned maintenance.
Ramokgopa said this resulted in the reduction of load shedding.
“This milestone means generating capacity will be ramped up by 800MW into the grid, resulting in the reduction of one stage of Load shedding.”
Meanwhile, the City of Tshwane said it is prepared to fight Eskom if the embattled power utility does not grant it permission to procure electricity from independent power producers.
The Tshwane Municipality on Monday announced that it hopes to procure generation capacity of at least 1 000 megawatts (MW) in the next three years from the private sector to make it less dependent on Eskom for its total requirement of about 2 600MW.
Asked how the City of Tshwane will deal with Eskom’s restrictive approach to entities utilising their own generation to offset load shedding. Brink said the city of Tshwane will fight it.
“We will fight Eskom and Nersa,” Brink said the importance of being energy secure has been a concern for the City of Tshwane for close to a decade.
ALSO READ: WATCH: ‘We will fight Eskom’ − Brink, if Tshwane is not allowed to procure power from IPPs
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