It’s been six days since Eskom implemented load shedding throughout the country.
The power utility has attributed this to having sufficient power capacity for now but has cautioned that the power system continues to remain significantly constrained.
Eskom has also announced that they successfully performed the first part of their planned maintenance drive without load shedding since 24 April.
“Eskom’s maintenance teams worked hard over the long-weekend and were able to perform planned maintenance on 2 303 MW of the generating plant. They further, also returned 1 453 MW of generating capacity back to service over this period. The focus of the maintenance festival was to ensure long-term reliability of the plant as well as restore units that are currently offline due to technical faults,” said Eskom’s acting Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Brian Molefe.
In a statement Eskom revealed that it used its emergency reserves, open-cycle gas turbines (OCGTs) and pumped storage schemes to augment capacity while the maintenance drive was underway.
“We would like to thank all electricity users for responding to our message to save. Every little bit of saving counts in reducing the need to implement load shedding,” added Molefe.
Eskom has called on all customers to continue reducing the load on the electricity grid by switching off geysers, air conditioners, pool pumps and all non-essential appliances throughout the day, which will reduce the electricity demand. As the nights begin to get colder, they request electricity users to consider energy efficient ways of keeping warm.
Eskom will provide regular updates on the status of the power system through all media platforms.
