By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Eskom says that the risk of continued load shedding remains high for the rest of the week, with some relief expected ahead of the Easter weekend as more units are brought online.
In a media briefing on Tuesday (12 April), chief executive Andre de Ruyter said the heavy rain in KZN combined with system outages had contributed to the latest round of load shedding.
He added that a number of units are expected to return before the long weekend, but that system performance was still ‘disappointing’.
“The outlook, therefore, is that we will face generation constraints going forward. We have therefore welcomed the latest announcement from the Department of Energy to procure more energy capacity.”
“From the middle to the end of next year (2023) we should start seeing additional capacity brought to the grid and we really look forward to that which will alleviate some of the pressure we are currently seeing and give us more headroom to perform maintenance on Eskom fleets.”
In addition to the recent bid window announced by the department, de Ruyter said the power utility had started the bid process to begin renewable energy projects on Eskom-owned land. These should also be added to the grid in the next 18-24 months.
De Ruyter confirmed that Eskom will ‘throttle back’ on its planned maintenance over the coming months, with the group’s generating units also historically performing better over these colder, drier months.
This means the outlook for winter is not ‘entirely dire’ and Eskom will give customers a warning when load shedding is introduced, he said. “Unfortunately we have to deal with probabilities – if we knew exactly when load shedding was going to take place it would make everybody’s lives much easier.”
He added that Eskom will publish its updated load shedding scenarios for the country in the coming weeks as part of a system report.
Eskom has announced that stage 2 load shedding will be implemented from 17h00 on Tuesday (12 April) afternoon until 05h00 on Wednesday.