Johannesburg – Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter has apologised for the inconvenience caused by load shedding and requested electricity consumers in South Africa to assist in reducing demand.
“We understand that this is a huge inconvenience to the country, we apologise for the negative impact this has had, not only on the business industry, (but) particularly (to) those students who are currently writing their matric exams and we want to request the support and cooperation of everyone to play their role in reducing demand particularly during people hours,” De Ruyter said.
Announcing the outlook for the week going forward, he says they have seen Lethabo 1 Power Station in the Free State return, which is about 600 megawatts. He says that Lethabo 2 is expected to have about 600MW tomorrow morning, which will add another 600 megawatts.
De Ruyter said the expectation that Kriel 1 Power Station in Mpumalanga will be on the grid by 5pm tomorrow afternoon, is positive.
He has also announced that the Medupi Power Station 3, Majuba Power Station 4, Duvha Power Station 4 and two Thuthuka units will return by the weekend.
“If you add all of these together we anticipate that between 3 800 and 4 000 megawatts will be added to the grid, which will have a positive impact on the outlook for load shedding going forward,” he said.
According to De Ruyter, they have been able to recover the dams, adding that the dam levels are healthy at the moment, although they are not yet quite full.
He also says it is important to maintain their reserves for unforeseen issues in the system.
“We intend over the night (Tuesday night) to pump those dams to maximum capacity. Our diesel stocks at Griquas we intend to replenish over the course of the next couple of days,” De Ruyter said.
“With all of the above the outlook for load shedding is that we will reduce load shedding to stage 3 from tomorrow morning (Wednesday) at 5am.
“This will be maintained until five on Friday morning, then we will maintain stage 2 at 5am on Saturday, after which they intend to suspend load shedding and wish to return to normal operations,” he said.
The power utility also intends to engage municipalities to cooperate and assist Eskom to navigate the supply constraints, saying this requires a collective effort.
Earlier today IOL reported that the Black Business Council called for the resignation of De Ruyter and other senior executives after Eskom announced another round of stage 4 load shedding on Monday.
In a statement, the council said that while it initially supported de Ruyter’s tenure, it is now calling for him and the entire Eskom board to step down due to their inability to stop the prolonged energy blackouts.
Political Bureau