Eskom load shedding warning amid cold weather

·8 Apr 2015

Eskom warned of further load shedding on Wednesday (8 April) amid the colder weather, following forced power cuts at stage 1 on Tuesday.

“The load shedding prognosis for today remains high and is dependent on the performance of the power plant,” the power utility said in a statement on Twitter.

A spokesperson for the group added that the colder weather was affecting power supply as more people were using heaters earlier than had been expected.

A National Energy Regulator (NERSA) System Adequacy Outlook published at the end of March, and based on Eskom reports, showed that total power capacity unavailable during the three months from January to March 2015 stood at 12,149MW, or 28.85%.

This was up from 9,346MW, or 22.2% in 2014, and 9,008MW or 21.39 of total capacity in 2013.

A presentation by the department of public enterprises to parliament at the end of March said that power cuts implemented by Eskom cost South Africa’s economy between $1.7 billion (R20 billion) and $6.8 billion (R80.1 billion) a month.

Dawie Roodt, director and chief economist at The Efficient Group, said late last year that Eskom’s blackouts had cost South Africa as much as R300 billion since 2008.

Eskom has been forced into rolling blackouts in 2015 following the collapse of one of its coal storage silos, diesel shortages, and maintenance issues.

Leadership issues also continue to plague the power utility following the sacking of chairman, Zola Tsotsi, and the suspension of Eskom’s CEO, Tshediso Matona, and three other senior executives including the financial director.

Load shedding schedules are available on its load shedding website for Eskom customers.