By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
State power utility, Eskom, has categorically denied that the national electricity grid faces imminent collapse.
This after social media posts claimed that the country is facing a looming complete blackout.
“Eskom refutes these claims and would like to assure South Africans that there are measures in place to avoid the collapse of the power system. Load shedding is one of these mechanisms.
“The risk of a national blackout, while inherent to the operation of a large power system, has an extremely low likelihood of materialising, given the implementation of a number of control measures, including load shedding.
“The grid is by no means at a higher or imminent risk of a collapse, and it would take an unforeseen and sudden sequence of events that results in a cascading collapse of the transmission or generation system, leading to a complete loss of supply across the country,” the power utility said.
The electricity provider emphasised that there are “robust contingency plans in place to deal with such an eventuality”.
“At the Enlit Africa conference… Interim GCE Calib Cassim reiterated that there are several controls in place… [There are] staff at the System Operator, who have the competence to manage the tight system.
“Eskom continues to drive generation recovery initiatives that are aimed at preventing the current performance from deteriorating in the short-term, and improving the overall performance of the generation fleet in the long-term,” the power utility said.
A media briefing on the state of system is expected to be held on Thursday to “give an update of the power system and share the outlook for winter, including contingency plans to avoid higher stages of load shedding”.
Meanwhile eThekwini Municipality’s Electricity Unit says the majority of the city’s substations are ready to implement the full load shedding plan, as early as next week.
“We’ve done a full assessment and we are now in agreement with Eskom.
“We have to put from stage 1 now, or all the substations that we believe are healthy, and therefore now producing a new schedule that’s going to exclude those who are affected totally,” says the city’s electricity head Maxwell Mthembu.
“So at least we can have a similar loadshedding schedule. The one we’ve been running is a temporal schedule so far.”
Mthembu says some substations cannot be switched off, as that would pose a significant risk to residents and infrastructure.
“But we know substations that we know were damaged beyond repair and are starting from scratch right now. That includes the Mariannridge substation and the surrounding which is somewhere in Pinetown, that also includes Toyota.
“Toyota substation actually wasn’t affected by the flood, it burned down this year so those areas where we don’t have a substation or rebuilding are not going to form part of the schedule.”
The city announced on Tuesday that eThekwini will be returning to normal loadshedding levels.
The municipality was excluded from stages 1 to 3 of the powers cuts, since last year’s disastrous floods.
Mthembu says the new loadshedding schedule will be made public later this week to help residents plan for the week ahead.
“The current schedule starting from stage 4 is the schedule we are going to be leaving. So the people who are affected today are going to be affected. It’s not going to come from somewhere and any other new person who was not being affected may change.”