Power utility Eskom says it will use emergency reserves to prevent load shedding on Saturday. This comes after the utility unexpectedly lost some generation units as a result of unplanned breakdowns on Saturday morning.
Eskom spokesperson Dikatso Mothae says their technical teams will continue to work over the holiday period to monitor the situation and to carry out planned maintenance to reduce unplanned breakdowns.
“The system is severely constrained today but with that said we do not believe that we will need to load shed. Our unplanned breakdowns are quite high but given the drop in demand over the festive season, this is how we are able to meet the demand in electricity. We continue to ask our customers to please use electricity sparingly that will go a long way in ensuring that we don’t have any load shedding going forward.”
Mothae urges customers to reduce electricity usage.
“Today as of 6:30 am unplanned breakdowns were sitting at 13 154 Megawatts. Our technical teams will continue to work over the holiday period to monitor the situation, carry out planned maintenance and to work at reducing these unplanned breakdowns to below 9 500 Megawatts in order to enable us to minimise the possibility of load shedding.”
Municipality granted court interdict
Meanwhile, the Raymond Mhlaba Municipality has been granted a court interdict by the Grahamstown High Court in the Eastern Cape. This after Eskom announced that it was proceeding with the bulk electricity supply interruption to the Municipality as of the 23rd of this month.
The decision was a result of the failure on the municipality’s part to provide Eskom with an acceptable payment arrangement for its debt.
The interruption was set to continue until the debt is paid in full or an acceptable repayment plan is made by the municipality in favour of Eskom.
Municipal spokesperson Sivenkosi Mtiya says, “As Raymond Mhlaba municipality, we would like to inform all residents that reside in Fort Beaufort, Adelaide, and Bedford that as the municipality we managed to get a court order against Eskom regarding their advertised disruption of services that are supposed to start on the 23rd of December. We would like to say that as the municipality we will continue discussing with Eskom and ensure that we find an amicable solution to the issue and that we would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused to our residents, business and stakeholders.”
