As a cold front settles in across the country – set to reach Johannesburg on Thursday – Eskom faces a difficult task to “protect the national grid from a total shutdown”.<\/p>\n
The power utility on Wednesday (18 June) declared a system emergency, noting that the national power grid is severely constrained.<\/p>\n
“The constrained conditions are expected to continue tomorrow, particularly between 5:30pm and 6:30pm,” Eskom said.<\/p>\n
It warned that if the demand did not decrease, this could result in the group invoking its emergency protocols and implementing rotational load reduction.<\/p>\n
“Although Eskom has adequate generating capacity to meet the demand during the day, the challenge is over the short sharp evening peak \u2013 particularly between 5:30pm and 6:30pm \u2013 when electricity demand increase up to 36 000 MW.”<\/p>\n
“The increase is predominantly due to the use of space heating, geysers and cooking that takes place during this time,” it said.<\/p>\n
Eskom requested commercial customers, particularly shopping centres and office blocks, to switch off non-essential lights and not to leave office equipment such as photocopiers and computers in standby mode after hours.<\/p>\n
“Eskom will utilise all necessary emergency resources at its disposal to keep the lights on, but should the demand not decrease, load reduction will be implemented as a measure of last resort to protect the national grid from a total shutdown,” it said.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, also on Wednesday, Fitch Ratings revised the outlook on Eskom to negative from stable and affirmed its long-term local currency Issuer Default Ratings (IDR).<\/p>\n
Power exceptionally tight: Eskom<\/span><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Load-shedding unlikely this weekend: Eskom<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n