Eskom to suspend rolling blackouts at 9pm

Eskom has announced that it will suspend stage two of its rolling blackouts at nine o’clock on Thursday evening and reinstate it at five o’clock on Friday morning but at stage one.

The power utility implemented stage two rolling blackouts at two o’clock on Wednesday afternoon and said it would continue until Saturday morning.

The move was aimed at preserving emergency reserves after five generating units failed at Eskom’s different power stations.

Blackouts

On Wednesday, Eskom told the Public Enterprises Committee that it’s not an impossible task to end the blackouts.

However, the power utility said there are a number of things that need to be done to achieve sufficient energy supply.

Both the power utility and the Department of Public Enterprises virtually briefed the committee on the utility’s annual report.

Members of the Committee are concerned about the imminent power cuts and its negative impact.

They want answers from those responsible to keep the lights on.

The Department of Public Enterprise says this requires all those involved to do their part.

Minister Pravin Gordhan says, “Our aim certainly must be that load shedding must end sooner rather than later. It will end when all of those things are done properly but in particular, if we have extra megawatts on the system and thirdly, we can get extra megawatts by doing maintenance better but also doing the operations which is the point you’re making, Chairperson, doing the operations as is required to be done by managers at different levels within the power stations and within Megawatt Park itself if everybody does their bit of work with the necessary discipline.”

VIDEO: SABC reporter Lulama Matya has more details: