Pretoria - Eskom does not anticipate that there will be a need to load shed today as the power system is currently stable following 24 days of no load shedding.
“However, the system remains vulnerable, meaning that any extra load or faults in the system may necessitate the need to implement load shedding,” said Eskom on Wednesday.
Eskom has met the country’s electricity demand while operating and maintaining its generation fleet in a sustainable manner for over three weeks. This resulted in no load shedding for 24 consecutive days.
In addition, the utility has appealed to all its customers to continue to reduce their electricity usage throughout the day but to be aware of the need to save more during the peak periods from 6am to 10am and 5pm to 9pm.
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.
Last week Cabinet announced that from Monday Unit 2 of the Koeberg Power Station in the Western Cape will be shut down for planned maintenance.
The unit is expected to return to service after three months.
The scheduled shutdown of Koeberg Unit 2 is part of Eskom’s overall maintenance programme for its fleet of power stations. Every 16 to 18 months, each of the two units at Koeberg is shut down for refueling, inspection and maintenance, said Cabinet.
The routine shutdowns are scheduled so as to avoid having both units out of service at the same time and to avoid the winter months in each year. - SAnews.gov.za
