By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
State owned power utility Eskom has announced that load shedding has been suspended until 16:00 on Tuesday “due to an improvement in available generation capacity”.
However at 16:00, it will immediately jump to Stage 4 until 05:00 on Wednesday where it will move to Stage 1, as originally communicated. This pattern will then repeat until further notice.
Eskom said it would communicate if any significant changes occur.
It again added that it thanks those South Africans who do heed the call to use electricity sparingly and efficiently, including switching off geysers from 17:00 to 21:00, in helping to alleviate the pressure on the power system and contributing to lower stages of load shedding.
The power utility’s move to suspend load shedding as days get colder runs counter to warnings that load shedding would escalate in winter.
According to the group’s generation data, it has managed to reduce outages to around 15,500MW, while peak demand has hit 32,400MW – close to the 33,000MW anticipated for winter.
If Eskom can keep outages below 15,000MW, its base plan for winter shows it will be able to keep load shedding between stage 3 and stage 5. However, if any serious breakdowns happen, or any other disruption, the threat of pushing to higher stages is still there.
The same risk exists if demand gets pushed up for any reason. Historically, South Africa’s winter demand has pushed as high as 37,000MW. In this scenario, four additional stages of load shedding would be required.
Eskom has been on a massive drive to curb demand, getting more groups and companies on board with its demand side management contracting, and driving public information campaigns to get households to cut their electricity use during peak hours.
For access to other load shedding schedules, Eskom has made them available on loadshedding.eskom.co.za.
Smartphone users can also download the app EskomSePush to receive push notifications when load shedding is implemented, as well as the times the area you are in will be off.