By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan says no load shedding is expected when South Africans go to the polls on Monday for the local government elections.
Gordhan and Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter were briefing the nation on the challenges faced by the power utility on Wednesday evening.
Eskom had to resort to level 4 due to the breakdown in several units at the generation plants, but also because of delays in the return of units that were out for maintenance and have not come back successfully.
The power utility hopes to return about 2 000 MW of power to the grid overnight, allowing the load shedding system likely to be downgraded from level 4 to level 3.
De Ruyter has outlined the reasons behind the load shedding across the country – saying the securing of power reserves ahead of election day has been among the factors that necessitated the planned power cuts.
“One makes predictions and forecasts the stability of the system as we have seen with some humility and there is always a residual risk but part of the reason why we have load shedding right now is in order for us to replenish our reserves, both from storage as well as our diesel reserves. But that is why we took the decision to implement load shedding right now, it was made specifically with a view of securing supply and capacity during election day.”
Gordhan said that not only are faults sometimes outside of Eskom’s control, but sometimes due to human error. At the same time, he cautioned that Eskom should not be treated as a “political football”.
He pointed out that Eskom was a key target during the state capture era and lots of time, money and effort now have to be spent on its recovery.
In the next 24 hours, the necessary exemptions will also be made by National Treasury for Eskom to find the expertise to bring in the needed skills to assist with the power challenges.
“It is clear that South Africa needs urgent interventions to introduce more megawatts onto the grid. The relevant stakeholders must see to this as soon as possible,” he said.
He said measures are also being put in place to ensure salaries are directly linked to the performance of the power stations.
Eskom supplies power to 16,000 of the 23,148 voting stations across the country, and the IEC has made available 14,000 lighting equipment to stations outside the Eskom supply areas.