Eskom puts the brakes on load shedding until 4pm today

Eskom has suspended load shedding from midnight on Sunday until 4pm on Monday.

The news comes as a relief for South Africans as freezing temperatures sweep across the country.

The power utility’s spokesperson Daphne Mokwena said the deliberate power cuts will kick back at 4pm on Monday.

“Due to consistent available generation capacity, load shedding will continue to be suspended from midnight until 4pm and stage 3 load shedding will remain in force from 4pm today until midnight.

“This pattern will be repeated daily until further notice. Eskom will publish another update should any significant changes occur,” said Mokwena.

Energy Action Plan

Meanwhile, with just a year since the introduction of the Energy Action Plan, Minister of Electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said it was bearing fruit, resulting in lower stages of load shedding.

Ramokgopa said Eskom has introduced open-cycle gas turbines to meet the country’s demand.

He said Eskom had been able to reduce capacity loss caused by plant failures to about 15 000 megawatts, which was the best-case scenario forecast in its planning for winter “and we even recorded just below 14 000MW recently as well”.

“As a result of improved generation capacity, we’ve got additional space to do what we call good maintenance − planned maintenance.”

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Power outages

On Sunday, Johannesburg’s City Power said it was taking necessary precautionary measures to deal with high volumes of power outages across the city.

Its spokesperson Isaac Mangena said cold temperatures would lead to higher electricity demand, which puts pressure on the network.

“City Power is taking all precautionary measures to mitigate against outages that may be triggered by adverse weather. Our teams are on high alert and we will increase resources in high-pressure areas to minimise the disruption of power supply to our residential customers,” Mangena said.

Additional reporting by Reitumetse Makwea

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