By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
State owned power utility Eskom has announced that load shedding will be suspended at midnight on Friday.
The group said that further updates will be delivered on Sunday for the week ahead or if anything happens that necessitates communication.
“Due to lower weekend demand load shedding will be suspended at midnight on Friday. Eskom will publish a further update on Sunday afternoon or as soon as any significant changes occur,” it said.
Since Wednesday evening (12 October), a generation unit each at Arnot and Majuba power stations was returned to service, while a generating unit each at Duvha, Hendrina, Lethabo and Tutuka power stations was taken offline for repairs.
Eskom currently has 5,254MW on planned maintenance, while another 15,190MW of capacity is unavailable due to breakdowns.
Load shedding was downgraded to stage 1 on Friday, following stage 2 for most of the week. Load shedding was suspended last weekend for a little over a day before breakdowns forced rolling blackouts to return.
Before being suspended, Eskom was on the longest load shedding streak in history, carrying the schedules over 32 days.
Meanwhile Municipal debt to Eskom stands at almost R50 billion nationwide, with the Free State province topping the list of defaulters.
Earlier this year, deputy president David Mabuza warned municipalities that total debt to Eskom surged by almost R5 billion in four months up to July 2022, which needs to be urgently addressed.
This debt adds to the reasons cited for the power utility’s struggle to meet South Africa’s electricity demand, on top of the ailing infrastructure, poor management, and corruption.
According to EskomsePush, South Africa has had 2104 hours (88 days) of load shedding this year alone. Independent analysis shows that individual households have been left in the dark for well over 450 hours – the worst on record by some margin.
Eskom has around R400 billion of debt that it cannot service, relying on annual bailouts from the National Treasury to say afloat.