Low risk of power cuts - Eskom

Eskom said on Tuesday it had cancelled rolling blackouts it had earlier said were needed, because it had fixed technical faults on some of its generators.

Eskom said on Tuesday it had cancelled rolling blackouts it had earlier said were needed, because it had fixed technical faults on some of its generators.

Published Jan 29, 2015

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Johannesburg - The chances of power cuts being implemented on Thursday were minimal, electricity supplier Eskom said.

“Today's risk of load shedding is minimised, it looks like the system is relatively stable,” spokesman Khulu Phasiwe said.

“If some of the generators break down, it will put us under strain again.”

Eskom ended stage one of rolling power cuts at 2pm on Wednesday, after it had initially announced that power cuts would be implemented from 10am until 10pm to manage dam levels at its pumped storage schemes.

“The reason that load shedding was lifted yesterday was that some of the generators were back in operation,” Phasiwe said.

He also thanked customers for heeding the call and reducing their energy consumption.

With it currently being Eskom's maintenance season, the power utility expected the power grid to remain constrained for the rest of the summer.

Eskom said the intensified power cuts were necessary because of a shortage of generator capacity. A number of generators were being repaired by technicians.

“At our pumped storage schemes (which use water to generate electricity), the dam levels are low because we were not able to pump the water back to full capacity over the weekend,” it said on Tuesday afternoon.

This was because Eskom had to use its pumped storage schemes over the weekend to meet demand.

“Ordinarily, the weekends are used to pump our dam levels to maximum capacity in preparation for the forecasted increased demand in electricity during the week.”

If Eskom continued generating enough capacity on Friday and the rest of the weekend, there would be no power cuts.

“But if there is an increase in demand that we are unable to supply, then we may have to implement some form of load shedding,” he said.

Sapa

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