Unplanned outages rose to 5‚500 Megawatts (MW) on August 27 from 5‚043MW on August 23 and 3‚200MW on August 14‚ Eskom said in its 66th system status bulletin.
Planned maintenance on August 27 was 2‚249MW from the lowest level this year of 845MW on July 30‚ so available capacity (including open cycle gas turbines) was only 34‚300MW compared with peak demand of 32‚493MW.
Peak evening demand is expected to ease this week from 34‚741MW on August 13 to 31‚954MW on Tuesday‚ 31‚801MW on Wednesday and 31‚718MW on Thursday as SA gradually warms up from its recent cold spell.
On August 7 Gauteng experienced its first widespread snowfalls since September 1981.
The highest actual peak demand of 35‚527MW took place on August 7.
The peak demand so far this year was supposed to be 36‚258MW on July 16 according to the 54th system status bulletin. Demand side management‚ which involves asking large industrial users to temporarily stop some industrial processes‚ meant that the actual peak demand was only 35‚443MW or a saving of 815MW on July 16. - I-Net Bridge