Eskom Chief Operating Officer, Jan Oberholzer, says Eskom may be forced to increase load shedding from Stage 3 load shedding to Stage 4 if the power utility fails to gather enough generation capacity to feed national peak demand.<\/p>\n
According to Oberholzer, Eskom suffered at least eight major breakdowns at its power stations \u2013 exacerbating strain on the already fragile and constrained power system.<\/p>\n
Only one of those units has, so far, been returned to service.<\/p>\n
The expected return of some of those units to service this week may not be enough to suspend load shedding.<\/p>\n
“If we look at the week ahead, we are short of the generating capacity we need to supply the country\u2019s demand.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe current outlook is that we need to implement Stage 3 load shedding tonight. It\u2019s important to make the point that it may increase if there are additional breakdowns. The three units that we expected to return to service have returned. However, because of unreliability and the unpredictability of our system, should something drastically happen we may be forced to increase the stage of load shedding from 3 to 4.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor [Tuesday] we are foreseeing stage three then Stage 2 on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Oberholzer said during this time, the power utility\u2019s emergency reserves will be coming under pressure because of increased dependence.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are currently burning two million litres of diesel per day and it is significant. For the month to date, we have burnt 40 million litres already. So we have to look at our emergencies that we don\u2019t run out of diesel. The water [plants] look fine but we may be forced to use more water. We have to make sure that we don\u2019t deplete our emergencies.<\/p>\n
\u201cDepending on how much we need to use our emergencies, we may be forced to implement load shedding throughout the day. We will try our best to avoid that but unfortunately that risk that does exist,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Since the beginning of May, the power utility has turned to implementing load shedding between 5pm and 10pm in an attempt to claw back some lost generation capacity and secure the national power grid.<\/p>\n
Eskom Chief Executive, Andre de Ruyter, explained that this particular time is when demand begins to climb \u2013 especially in winter.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur demand pattern has moved to a typical winter pattern so the peaks during evening peak are much more pronounced. During the day time, the system is capable of handling demand as well as during the morning. So it\u2019s really only a constraint that we have during the peak. What that means is that we can cope with the demand during the day\u2026this also then puts us in a position where there\u2019s less of an impact on business life,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do understand that after 5pm, the impact on the domestic consumer is particularly pronounced and that is highly regrettable and we have clearly got a challenge with resolving that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
De Ruyter acknowledged that the power utility\u2019s performance has been \u201cdisappointing\u201d and unacceptable.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe performance has been quite disappointing and we are going to be implementing action to improve our performance. We are really going to try extraordinary measures to improve the performance of our generation system.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe current performance is clearly not acceptable and we cannot continue to impose load shedding certainly not at the levels that we are at the moment. The management team and I are ceased with this matter we are working at all hours of the day and night in order to overcome this,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Source: South African Government News Agency<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Eskom Chief Operating Officer, Jan Oberholzer, says Eskom may be forced to increase load shedding from Stage 3 load shedding to Stage 4 if the power utility fails to gather enough generation capacity to feed national peak demand.According to Oberholzer…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n