Johannesburg - The full recovery of the power system will take about 10 days, and the probability of Stage 1 load-shedding remains high for Sunday evening, state-owned power utility Eskom said.
"The power system remains constrained with the risk of stage one load-shedding remaining high for this evening [Sunday] due to a shortage of capacity from the effects of the recent industrial action," Eskom said in a statement.
Eskom’s prognosis was that the power system would take up to about 10 days to recover from the effects of the strike by trade unions over wages, once all staff returned to work on Monday. Eskom had not implemented load-shedding on Sunday morning, but the risk remained high from 5pm to 9pm. Should load-shedding be implemented, it would be for up to four hours.
Level one load-shedding required 1000MW to be shed nationwide. Load-shedding was conducted as a measure of last resort to protect the power system from a total collapse or blackout, Eskom said.
"While safety of employees remains our first priority, recovery teams at our power stations continue to work hard to stabilise the power system and to return our generation plant as quick as possible."
Customers should note that some municipalities may take longer to restore load once load-shedding had been terminated. If customers experienced outages for longer periods than announced, they should contact their supplier (Eskom or the municipality), as this may be a localised power outage.
"We thank residents and businesses for using electricity sparingly during this period. Please switch off geysers during the day especially during peak periods [7am to 10am and 6pm to 9pm], as well as all non-essential lighting and electricity appliances to assist in reducing demand. Remember to treat all electrical points as live during a power outage," Eskom said.
Customers were advised to keep checking their load-shedding schedules on the Eskom and municipal websites and plan on the assumption that load-shedding would take place.
For Eskom customers, these schedules were available on the Eskom website (loadshedding.eskom.co.za). Eskom customers could also contact the customer contact centre at 0860-037-566.