In a bid to create transparency about the state of the national power grid, Eskom conceded that it faced continued struggles to meet the country’s electricity demands resulting in more frequent load shedding.
However, despite load shedding’s significant impact on the public and the economy, the power utility stressed that it was marginal compared to the impact of countrywide blackouts.
During an information session at the utility’s Mega Watt Park offices, Eskom’s national control centre manager, Al’Louise van Deventer and transmission specialist, Dr Richard Candy answered tough questions about the state of the national power system and the reasons for load shedding.
Van Deventer, who was responsible for ensuring a balance between supply and demand on the national power grid, said although South Africa had experienced pockets of power interruptions, the country had fortunately never experienced a complete countrywide blackout.
If South Africa was plunged into countrywide darkness it would not be able to tap into neighbouring countries’ power grids to restart the grid, resulting in complete blackouts which would last at least two weeks, she explained.
“The consequences of a total blackout are so horrendous you don’t even want to go there,” Candy warned.
Food production as well as access to goods and services including sanitation and fuel would be affected, he said.
“The whole country would be without electricity for those two weeks… no cellphones, no fuel, no sewage… imagine the medical crisis created because all sanitation operations have stopped,” van Deventer added.
Eskom’s group executive, Dr Steve Lennon said the utility would do everything necessary to prevent a complete blackout.
“There are those that think they can come to Eskom and say ‘thou shall not load shed’; if someone tries that then I have told national control before, ‘You do what you have to and you don’t ask anyone’s permission.”
“We are not going to keep the lights on at the cost of the safety of the personnel.”
According to Lennon, since the rotational load shedding that was implemented in 2008, the power utility had focused so strongly on keeping the lights on that it only performed essential maintenance on its power stations.
This decision had impacted negatively on Eskom’s fleet of plants and the power utility’s ability to securely meet electricity demands, which the utility had since sought to remedy.
Currently, the power system remained tight but was manageable.
“As winter is not entirely over we are still experiencing high demand, especially between 5.30pm to 6.30pm,” Van Deventer said.
As the country transitioned from winter to summer, the public were encouraged to move from “beating the peak”, which served to reduce electricity consumption during the short sharp evening peak, to “living lightly”, whereby customers were urged to minimise their consumption throughout the day.
However, meeting the demand during summer was met with different challenges including lower generation capacity as plant maintenance was conducted during this period.
Lennon called on customers to reduce their electricity consumption as far as possible, and to maintain those savings.
