In a January 11 letter to the City of Mbombela manager, Wiseman Khumalo, the senior manager of customer care for Eskom’s Mpumalanga operating unit, Motshabi Mokgatlha, has admitted that national load-shedding has been wholly inadequate in protecting the integrity of the national electricity grid.

“Over the past few months, load-shedding has proven to be woefully insufficient and thus its objectives have become difficult to achieve. This has resulted in the implementation of higher stages of load-shedding, and the prospect of possible additional steps being taken to protect and maintain the integrity of the electricity grid,” writes Mokgatlha.

He says load-reduction is an emergency mechanism that is at the disposal of the licensed operator to responsibly manage and proactively deal with issues that can potentially harm the provision of a reliable supply of electricity.

“The extended load-reduction was implemented as a desperate means to assist in maintaining the balance between supply and demand,” he says.

“Eskom has exhausted all available levers. Open cycle gas turbines and diesel are at their full utilisation, emergency reserves have been depleted and Eskom has had to implement high levels of continuous load-shedding.

“The next lever that we have to draw on to assist in maintaining the stability of the grid and infrastructure is the proportionate reduction on the demand side,” Mokgatlha says.

He advises that Eskom has identified areas that pose a disproportionately high demand on the grid and infrastructure.

“At the declaration by the system operator of a system emergency, an instruction will be issued, the affected areas will be notified, and Eskom will endeavour to engage and communicate with the affected areas.

“Load-reduction will be implemented when necessary to assist the system operator to maintain the balance between supply and demand and to protect the integrity of the electricity grid.”