Eskom playing politics for Zuma speech?
Eskom has asked its ‘key’ industrial customers to reduce demand by 15% during the State of The Nation Address on Thursday (12 February) evening.
This is according to energy expert, Chris Yellend, citing two independent sources, including the South African Independent Power Producers Association (Saippa).
“Eskom CEO just asked industry to cut power usage by 15% to prevent load shedding during #SONA2015,” Saippa said in a message on social networking site, Twitter.
One other source, from a major industrial company in SA, told Yellend that he had received an email from Eskom requesting that his company reduce demand by 15% between 6-9pm on Thursday evening.
This, Yellend said, gives rise to speculation of political interference.
Speaking to Fin24 he said Eskom had been subject to politically motivated decisions to keep the lights on during the Football World Cup in 2010, and during the lead up to the general elections in 2014.
This, he added, puts political considerations ahead of economic considerations, because reducing demand by 15% impacts negatively on the economy.
Eskom said on Thursday morning that there is a low to medium probability of load shedding, although it warned its systems remain constrained. This after the company had been forced into load shedding every day for the past week at least.
BusinessTech asked Eskom if it had requested key customers to reduce demand by 15% during the Sona.
It said the following:
“In all our communication with electricity users we say that the system will continue to be under severe pressure during the week, so the risk of load shedding remains high.
There is a shortage of generation capacity due to units that are currently out of service due to planned and unplanned maintenance.
The focus is on returning the units that are on unplanned maintenance back on line in order to increase available capacity.
We urge all South Africans to partner with us to save 10% of their electricity usage throughout the day.”
Eskom said its commercial customers, particularly shopping centres and office blocks, can also make a big difference by switching off non-essential lights and not leaving office equipment such as photocopiers and computers in standby mode after hours.
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