The announced load shedding for the rest of the week may have been averted.
This was according to Eskom spokesperson Andrew Etzinger on SABC Morning Live this morning.
Last night Eskom said to prepare for load shedding to continue for the rest of the week.
This was after damage to the central coal storage silo at Majuba power station on Saturday afternoon brought on power outages throughout large parts of South Africa yesterday.
The silo, which houses over 10 000 tons of coal, cracked impacting coal supplies to all six units at the power station resulting in the power station operating at reduced capacity of 1 300MW.
No injuries were reported.
As a result, Eskom began implementing stage 1 of rotational load shedding on Sunday from 8 am until 11 pm, according to the published load shedding schedules available at https://loadshedding.eskom.co.za/ for Eskom customers.
However, the good news from Etzinger was that we may only face load shedding between the peak time between 6 pm and 8 pm.
“Unless there are unforeseen problems there will not be load shedding during the day,” he said.
Etzinger reported that the Majuba power station should be at two thirds capacity by the end of the week.
Still customers are urged to switch off pool pumps, turn air-conditioning to 23⁰C and to switch off geysers and unnecessary lights to limit the impact of the load shedding.
Eskom customers can contact the customer call centre on 0860 037 566. Municipal customers need to contact their own municipalities for their schedules.
