LOAD SHEDDING NEWS - Eskom has “granted” the nation the luxury of another day of light and power by suspending load shedding until 16:00 on Wednesday.
According to the power utility’s latest update, load shedding will return at Stage 1 in the evenings, with day-time suspension until Friday.
This pattern will repeat until further notice, Eskom said.
The news was received with (unsurprisingly) mixed reactions of “We should not be having load shedding at all” and “Dankie Siyabonga!” on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter).
Load shedding schedule
Tuesday, 24 October
- Suspended: None
Wednesday, 25 October
- Suspended: 12:00 to 16:00
- Stage 1: 16:00 to 24:00
Thursday, 26 October
- Stage 1: 00;00 to 05:00
- Suspended: 05:00 to 16:00
- Stage 1: 16:00 to 24:00
Sufficient emergency generation reserves
Eskom attributed its continued suspension of load shedding to the power utility’s sufficient emergency generation reserves and the anticipated evening peak demand remaining low.
In his weekly media briefing on Monday, 23 October, Electricity Minister Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa shared in his update on government’s implementation of its Energy Action Plan (EAP) that Eskom’s power generation fleet was beginning to show “sustained improved performance over an extended period of time”.
“This improved generation and lower-than-projected demand has allowed for an exponential increase in planned outages or ‘good maintenance’,” the minister said.
“The increased planned outage means that we are improving the overall performance capacity of the fleet, improving reliability and efficiency, and steadily ensuring we navigate to an equilibrium between demand and supply, buffered by a healthy reserve margin.”
A positive turn?
According to BusinessTech, plants are performing better than the same time in 2021 and 2022. This, coupled with an improvement in breakdowns, indicates that Eskom’s energy availability factor has seemingly taken a positive turn.
For the first time this year, the projections for the total hours of load shedding experienced by the country, have fallen under a cumulative 80 hours, currently standing at 79.6 days.
This in comparison to the high of 101 days predicted at the end of May.
