WHILE Zululanders breathed a sigh of relief on Thursday night as Eskom lifted the power emergency, the City of uMhlathuze remains on standby should there be another blackout call.
Zululanders endured the country’s first load shedding in six years last week when Eskom announced a power emergency on Thursday caused by heavy rains over seven days, which had wet its coal stocks.
Large industrial customers in Richards Bay were the first to be asked to reduce consumption by 10% while the public were requested to conserve electricity to help ease demand on the power grid.
But on Thursday, the fear of widespread load shedding, similar to 2008, gripped the country as the power utility downgraded the load shedding warning from grade 3 to grade 2.
This means the load reduction needed to protect the national grid against total collapse, was reduced from 4 000MW to 2 000MW.
According to Eskom, stage 2 requires load shedding every day, Monday to Saturday, between 6am and 10.30pm, while stage 3 requires load shedding right through the day and night.
Businesses and households experienced emergency power cuts and rotational load shedding on Thursday, as the City of uMhlathuze released a provisional load shedding schedule until 6 April.
‘As of last night (Thursday), we temporarily stopped the load shedding,’ said City Chief Communications Officer Vukile Mathabela.
‘Should the need arise, we will continue according to the schedule, which is available on the City and Eskom website. We are on standby and everything is in place should there be another emergency,’ said Mathabela.
Eskom is currently managing an extremely tight system and has urged the public to continue to use electricity sparingly although the emergency is over.
‘Eskom will only be doing load shedding as a last resort,’ said a media statement.
‘We are, however, publishing these schedules to enable customers to be better prepared in the event load shedding is required to protect Eskom’s national power system. Customers are encouraged to take note of the schedule and engage with Eskom via our contact centre at 086 003 7566/086 00 ESKOM or www.eskom.co.za.
The City of uMhlathuze provisional load shedding schedule is available on www.zululandobserver.co.za and www.umhlathuze.gov.za
* For more on loadshedding go to https://bit.ly/1cEgi5N
