Johannesburg – Eskom has assured South Africans that they would not experience load-shedding and lights would be on during the winter season and beyond.
The power utility was reacting to concerns of residents, particularly, those living in Joburg suburbs and surrounding areas, who experienced a series of power outages since last month.
Areas mostly affected were Weltevreden Park, Discovery, Constantia Kloof, Ontdekkers Park, Honeydew, Laser Park, Horizon View, Wilgeheuwel, Strubens Valley, Ruimsig, Helderkruin, Roodekrans and Ramosa.
Most of them complained that City Power, a power utility for the City of Joburg, had failed to timeously warn them about the outages – a claim the power utility denies.
It was adamant that the power outages – which are likely to continue until the end of June, were happening with the aim of allowing the city to execute maintenance and/ or emergency duties to correct defects in the network.
Despite the explanation, some residents were not convinced and attacked the City of Joburg via social media.
Other parts of Gauteng also experienced power outages that, in some cases, led to crashes on the roads due to dysfunctional traffic lights.
Their anger grew after reports this week indicated that Eskom chairperson Ben Ngubane had insinuated that the country was likely to have a repeat of the devastating effects of the 2008 load-shedding if Eskom was not allowed to buy more coal – an allegation, Eskom has denied vehemently.
Eskom spokesperson Khulu Phasiwe denied the reports. He said Ngubane was misquoted, saying what he meant was that if the power utility was not allowed by the National Treasury to enter into contracts to buy coal, it could result in the country experiencing load-shedding.
Ngubane made the remarks while appearing before Parliament's standing committee on public accounts (Scopa), alongside axed chief executive Brian Molefe.
“The chairperson never said we will have load-shedding this year. He was merely raising concerns about the lack of surplus coal in four of our coal-fired power stations in the country. We have a total of 13 coal-fired power stations.
“Out of the 13, four have adequate coal in them. We need to ensure that they have surplus coal especially during winter," said Phasiwe.
He said people should not panic because nine of the coal power stations had adequate and surplus coal, saying “our wish was that all coal power stations had enough coal as well as surplus coal”.
“In addition to the 13 coal stations, we have opened the second unit of Koeberg Power Station which would be able to generate 1 800 megawatts of electricity. This would further increase the capacity of our stations by generating more units of electricity,” Phasiwe said.