{"id":51887,"date":"2014-01-20T13:37:46","date_gmt":"2014-01-20T11:37:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=51887"},"modified":"2014-01-20T14:47:32","modified_gmt":"2014-01-20T12:47:32","slug":"eskom-power-tight-for-2-more-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/51887\/eskom-power-tight-for-2-more-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Eskom: power tight for 2 more years"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eskom<\/a> says that the threat of load-shedding may continue for the next two years, as it continues with an\u00a0intensive maintenance programme.<\/p>\n

Andrew Etsinger, GM for demand management at the power utility was speaking to Talk Radio 702.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’d say the probability of load shedding is low, but it\u2019s always in the background\u2026our reserve margins are low, and that is due to the fact that we are doing a large amount of maintenance on our generation fleet\u2026we continue to urge and ask for the support from our customers,”\u00a0Etsinger said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we can keep the damand at these levels, or slightly lower, well be fine.”<\/p>\n

He noted, however, that the more electricity consumed, particularly amid the recent hot spell, \u201cputs us closer to the edge”.<\/p>\n

Eskom said that the\u00a0Medupi coal-fired plant will initially not make a big difference to power supply. The project has seen several delays, mostly due to labour strikes.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately its not going to make a big difference. We are going to be in a tight situation for the next two years. Medupi will be producing power onto the grids by the end of this year, but all it will really do is enable us to take one or two generators out of service for maintenance,”\u00a0Etsinger said.<\/p>\n

The executive said further that Eskom would have an intensive maintenance programme over the next two years.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough Medupi will give us much relief, its only when a couple of the generators come on stream – that will be in a couple of years\u2019 time – that we will start to get additional significant capacity,\u201d he warned.<\/p>\n

He said that labour issues at Medupi had been ironed out with the project “back on track”.<\/p>\n

Last week Fitch Ratings upgraded Eskom\u2019s national long-term ratings to AAA(zaf), while in\u00a0November,\u00a0Brian Dames<\/a> resigned as chief executive of the power utility.<\/p>\n

More on Eskom<\/h3>\n

Eskom CEO steps down<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Eskom up for worst company in the world<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Fitch upgrades Eskom rating<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Trevor Manuel for Eskom CEO?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eskom says that the threat of load-shedding may continue for the next two years as it continues with an intensive maintenance programme.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":37773,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2005,1164,7329,26,6999,7328],"class_list":["post-51887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-brian-dames","tag-eskom","tag-fitch-ratings","tag-headline","tag-medupi","tag-talk-702"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51887"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51899,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51887\/revisions\/51899"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}