“Although some people might have experienced outages, we can assure you that it was not load shedding,” Zwane said.
He said there was a difference between unplanned outages in a street or neighbourhood and load shedding. “Unplanned outages could be caused by overloading, technical faults, or by illegal connections. These are unpredictable. Load shedding would be when there is a shortage of capacity and areas or suburbs will be without electricity for certain periods, as per municipal schedule.”
“Please be assured that load shedding has so far not been exercised this winter, despite the tight capacity,” Zwane said.
In previous years Eskom have had generally reduced planned maintenance to the minimum during the winter months to ensure that there is maximum capacity available to meet the high demand for electricity. “This year, however, it was decided to do things differently and not defer essential maintenance work this winter. This is to ensure that our power stations can perform more reliably, continuously and meet the electricity demand of all residents.”
Zwane said criminal activities such as illegal connections and vandalism of Eskom infrastructure were a further hindrance in keeping the lights on. “It furthermore benefits only a few individuals in the community at the expense of the majority. It is also unfortunate that such practices endanger the lives of innocent people. Eskom is continuously engaging with the community leadership and law-enforcement agencies to try and curb such activities.”
