{"id":85916,"date":"2015-04-24T12:40:23","date_gmt":"2015-04-24T10:40:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=85916"},"modified":"2015-04-24T12:40:23","modified_gmt":"2015-04-24T10:40:23","slug":"load-shedding-forecast-for-the-long-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/85916\/load-shedding-forecast-for-the-long-weekend\/","title":{"rendered":"Load shedding forecast for the long weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Eskom has released its weekend load shedding forecast, showing that demand for power will outstrip projected supply for much of the long weekend.<\/p>\n<p>South Africans experienced 12 consecutive days of load shedding in April, following a continued\u00a0shortage of generating capacity and increased demand from users, coupled with periods of unplanned maintenance.<\/p>\n<p>On 17 April, Transnet chief Brian Molefe was\u00a0appointed as new acting CEO of the power utility,\u00a0following the sacking of chairman\u00a0<span class=\"_dwd st s std\">Zola Tsotsi,<\/span>\u00a0and the suspension of Eskom\u2019s CEO Tshediso Matona and three other senior executives including the financial director.<\/p>\n<p>Molefe was asked to move from Transnet to Eskom\u00a0because of his experience in turning around the Public Investment Corporation and providing stability at Transnet.<\/p>\n<p>According to Molefe, while South Africans had a right to complain about load shedding, he said the utility was still working &#8220;90% of the time&#8221; and felt the public shouldn&#8217;t &#8220;beat up&#8221; the group.<\/p>\n<p>He explained that there was a 3000MW gap between demand and output caused by maintenance and other issues, which constantly lead to the outages.<\/p>\n<p>South Africa&#8217;s economy has lost almost R300 billion since load shedding started, costing the country over 1 million jobs, according to economists.<\/p>\n<p>The government hopes to fill the gap with the\u00a0Medupi and Kusile power stations, but they are only due to be completed in 2019 and 2020 respectively.<\/p>\n<p>Energy Minister Lynne Brown says South Africans should expect load shedding for the next two years, at least.<\/p>\n<p>Here is the long weekend forecast:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Friday (24 April):<\/strong> The capacity available to meet tomorrow\u2019s evening peak\u00a0demand is 31 032 MW (including open cycle gas turbines) while demand is forecast at 30\u00a0638 MW.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Saturday (25 April)<\/strong>: The capacity available to meet that evening\u2019s peak demand is 30 274 MW (including open cycle gas turbines) while demand is forecast at 29 302 MW.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Sunday (26 April)<\/strong>: The capacity available to meet that evening\u2019s peak demand is 28 582 MW (including open cycle gas turbines) while demand is forecast at 29 169 MW.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Monday (27 April)<\/strong>: The capacity available to meet that evening\u2019s peak demand is 28 426 MW (including open cycle gas turbines) while demand is forecast at 30 564 MW.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div id=\"attachment_85920\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a  data-lightbox=\"post-image\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Eskom-supply-and-demand-24-to-27-April.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-85920\" class=\"size-full wp-image-85920\" src=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Eskom-supply-and-demand-24-to-27-April.png\" alt=\"Eskom supply and demand 24 to 27 April\" width=\"630\" height=\"504\" srcset=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Eskom-supply-and-demand-24-to-27-April.png 630w, https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Eskom-supply-and-demand-24-to-27-April-300x240.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-85920\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Eskom supply and demand 24 to 27 April<\/p><\/div>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">More on\u00a0energy<\/h3>\n<p><strong><a title=\"Permalink to These areas are exempt from load shedding\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/general\/85674\/these-areas-are-exempt-from-load-shedding\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">These areas are exempt from load shedding<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/general\/85650\/eskom-load-shedding-risk-for-the-week\/\">Eskom load shedding risk for the week<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a title=\"Permalink to Petrol price decrease coming: AA\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/general\/85353\/petrol-price-decrease-coming-aa\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Petrol price decrease coming: AA<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eskom has released its weekend load shedding forecast, showing that demand for power will outstrip projected supply for much of the long weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":77873,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1164,26,1165],"class_list":["post-85916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-eskom","tag-headline","tag-load-shedding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85916","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=85916"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85930,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85916\/revisions\/85930"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}