reportedly<\/a> ready to submit the revised code to Nersa in the coming days.<\/p>\n“What we’ve sought to do with revision three is to take away the emergency contingency measure regime – because when we reach that level, beyond stage 8, the propensity to make errors is there.”<\/p>\n
He said scheduling load shedding beyond stage 8 would make sure that any outages outside the current plan can happen with a plan and safely protect the grid. He said the goal is to protect the national grid and avoid a total blackout scenario, and load shedding is an excellent tool to do this.<\/p>\n
“To go beyond stage 8, even with all its inconveniences and impact to the economy, is a rationalised, technically accepted methodology to avoid a blackout.”<\/p>\n
How the load shedding specifications work<\/strong><\/p>\nThe NRS 048-9 Code of Practice is primarily an electricity utility-driven and executed document that derives its mandate and authority, once approved by the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa), as part of the Electricity Regulations Act.<\/p>\n
The code that will soon come into effect is NRS 048-9, Edition 3.<\/p>\n
When the first edition of the NRS048-9 code was established in 2010, load shedding stages were capped at Stage 4 \u2013 representing 25% of the base load \u2013 requiring utilities to \u201cfind\u201d electricity load under emergency conditions.<\/p>\n
According to the NRS, \u2018finding\u2019 electricity with 75% of the load not being used was reasonably straightforward. However, attempting to do so beyond Stage 4 was not easy.<\/p>\n
The need for Stage 6 load shedding in 2019 prompted the NRS 048-9 Work Group to consider extending the load shedding stages to manage load shedding to Stage 8 (Edition 2).<\/p>\n
In stage 8 half the electricity load is shed, and the other half is waiting to be shed, it said. Under these conditions, it is generally much harder to \u201cfind\u201d electricity load, it said.<\/p>\n
Given the deterioration of Eskom\u2019s grid and energy availability, it has now become prudent to plan even further ahead.<\/p>\n
The group said the final NRS 048-9 Edition 3 will now provide a methodology for utilities to\u00a0reduce the whole load base in a structured way<\/strong>. Ostensibly, this would provide for 16 stages of load shedding \u2013 although the final picture could look very different with other changes under consideration.<\/p>\nThis also means that contingency plans for the unknown \u2013 ie, \u201cwhat happens beyond stage 8\u201d \u2013 can be dropped.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce all the load is used, there is no need for a contingency option,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
The NRS stressed that just because the new load shedding schedules will extend beyond stage 8, it does not necessarily mean that the country will move beyond stage 8 \u2013 it\u2019s just planning ahead.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe public is assured that the need to plan for load shedding beyond Stage 8, and the removal of the associated contingency measures, is primarily a proactive measure to enable the various electricity utilities, especially Eskom, to be in a state of readiness and preparedness to respond in the event of and the need to \u2013 but hopefully not \u2013 institute load shedding beyond Stage 8 levels.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlthough the Association believes that NCC and SO have managed load shedding well, often under difficult circumstances, to keep as many of the lights on as possible, it feels that the proactive planning and preparation for load shedding at elevated stages will prevent errors from occurring,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
\nRead: South Africa has spent an entire month in the dark<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Africa will soon have new load shedding stages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":647437,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9874],"tags":[26,18021],"class_list":["post-685445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-headline","tag-nrs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685445","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=685445"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":685451,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685445\/revisions\/685451"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/647437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}