Eskom supply low, but not at breaking point

Published Feb 20, 2014

Share

Eskom supply low, but not at breaking point

Eskom found itself back in the danger zone yesterday, as it was last month. Although it had issued a red alert, the electricity supply situation was not as dire as it was in November last year, when the power utility declared a state of supply emergency. Spokesman Andrew Etzinger said yesterday that Eskom had not asked its big industrial customers to reduce their consumption or to shut any operations but had asked everyone to use electricity sparingly. “We are certainly not at a stage of declaring an emergency and there is no risk of load shedding, but we are sitting with a reserve margin of less than 1 000 megawatts this evening.” He said technical problems were to blame. On Monday, unplanned outages reduced supply by 4 700MW and planned maintenance in the past few weeks had reduced supply by about 6 000MW, which meant more than 10 000MW of Eskom’s generating capacity was out of action. Electricity consumption was at a level Eskom “would expect”. Even though consumption by large industrial users had picked up, he said “it’s not really the reason we are facing this situation today”. – Londiwe Buthelezi

Northam board names new chief

Northam Platinum had appointed Paul Dunne as the new chief executive to replace Glyn Lewis, the company said after the market closed yesterday. The appointment “arises from a comprehensive process followed by the board to timeously find a suitable replacement”, the company said. “The board is pleased to have found a highly qualified and experienced replacement.” Dunne will start in his new position on March 1. The shares rose 0.12 percent to R42.65 yesterday. – Sapa

Related Topics: