The embattled state-owned power utility Eskom says stage 2 load shedding will continue until Monday morning. This due to a shortage of generation capacity the utility says.
#POWERALERT 2
Date: 2 February 2020Stage 2 rotational loadshedding will continue from 09:00 tomorrow until Thursday at 06:00, with respite between 06:00 to 09:00 each day, when possible@SABCNewsOnline @IOL @eNCA @ewnupdates @News24 @SowetanLIVE @TheSAnews @SAgovnews pic.twitter.com/hNv9ewXpMq
— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) February 2, 2020
Eskom has depleted its emergency reserves which had been used extensively to supplement the capacity over the past few days.
The power utility claims out-played outages are at about 11 150 megawatts but the company is monitoring the system closely and will continue to give periodic updates on the status of the power system.
On Friday Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter warned South Africans that they should expect increased load shedding over the next 18 months as this will be the time it will take for Eskom to complete the maintenance program including to fix its generation infrastructure.
Economist Lumkile Mondi says the announcement by Eskom CEO was not a shock at all.
“The lack of maintenance has really led to unreliability of the energy availability factor that is just available to be distributed across South Africa. So therefore he is basically bringing predictability and certainty to the market,” explains Mondi.
