Unfair load-shedding irks residents

MBOMBELA – Residents have been greatly affected by load-shedding this past week. Although Steiltes has been bearing the brunt of blackouts, electricity supply to West Acres and Stonehenge was finally also cut on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Over the weekend, the latter experienced load-shedding between 08:00 and 15:00, while Steiltes was left in the dark at night. This area’s residents are hot under the collar, demanding that residents of West Acres and Stonehenge also be subjected to load-shedding at night. “It is only fair that load-shedding between the suburbs are rotated,” a resident of Steiltes remarked.

Eskom had to implement stage-two load-shedding early Friday morning due to a shortage of generation capacity as several units were on unplanned outages due to technical faults. Units which were expected to come online after maintenance, have delayed to do so and among these was Koeberg’s unit one.

Eskom implemented its maintenance plan to increase the reserve margin and stabilise the grid. The power system still remained severely constrained and would remain so for the rest of this week. Lowvelder enquired from businesses in Steiltes to see how they were coping with load-shedding. Ms Jeniffer Grobler, a teacher at Kabouterland, said they were fortunate to have a gas stove, but the little ones were affected in the afternoon during their classes. “We usually have all the fans on in the classroom, but now they are struggling,” said Grobler.

Owner of Stefano’s Trattoria, Ms Elena Potgieter, said they had not been affected since they mainly used pizza ovens, but added that it was frustrating not to be able to use their card machines. She also hadn’t seen an increase in customers.

“We use lamps and candles to set the mood and to keep the customers happy,” Potgieter added.

Motorists have also experienced the frustration of load-shedding during the peak hours of traffic. According to Ms Bessie Pienaar, communications officer at Mbombela Local Municipality, traffic officials do their duty at main intersections while load-shedding is implemented, but there are not nearly enough of them to man all the main traffic lights and traffic points. “At the moment there are also officers deployed to assist with the point duties at the National Road & Time Trial Championship which is taking a route through Mbombela and ending at the Mbombela Stadium,” Pienaar added.

On Monday morning Eskom announced that it stopped stage two of load-shedding and that the restoration of power took longer in some areas. According to the company it implemented load-shedding as a last resort to protect the power system from collapsing, and it only shed what was required to balance demand and supply. The system would continue to be under severe pressure this week, so the risk of it being implemented remained high.

There is a shortage of generation capacity due to units that are currently out of service. This is due to planned and unplanned maintenance. The focus is to get the units which are on unplanned maintenance back on line in order to increase available capacity.

The newspaper also enquired from its Facebook users how they were coping under the current circumstances. Ms Jaliza LeeAnn Jan van Riebeeck said it severely affected her fish-breeding operation. She had to invest in a generator. Ms Cornelia Pretorius added that it had been terrible with no power every day and

Mr Jan Henning added that, thanks to a combination of solar power and gas, he didn’t notice it unless he went outside.