Cape Town - The power grid will be under severe strain from the middle of the month until March, Eskom says.
“This does not imply we will be load shedding. If we load-shed, we will do so when we have to protect the system from collapsing,” said Eskom spokesman Khulu Phasiwe.
He said because companies had closed for the festive period, they used the drop in demand to maintain power stations.
This included maintenance on three of Eskom’s silos which were found to have “structural defects”, after silo 20 at the Majuba power station in Mpumalanga collapsed on November 1 and crippled the power system, sending the country into load shedding.
At the Majuba silo, contingency measures were put in place, including the use of trucks to transport coal to the furnaces as a six-month investigation conducted into the collapse was under way. He said the results of the investigation would be made public at the end of April.
A second crack of about 2m in silo 30 was discovered later in November and two silos at Tutuka Power Station, also in Mpumalanga, were found damaged.
The maximum operating levels of these silos had been reduced to 50 percent.
Phasiwe said the power utility looked to improve stations to meet the demand for upcoming winter months, which saw the power demand increase.
Provincial Eskom spokeswoman Jolene Henn said the parastatal could not warn the country well in advance when load shedding would be implemented.
“We cannot predict days before the time. If we are constrained at a particular time, we will implement load shedding where there is a requirement.
“We don’t decide that there will be load shedding, its about protecting the system.
“If at any time we cannot supply the demand from our consumers and have explored all other avenues, including asking consumers to switch off, we will implement it to ensure that there is not a countrywide blackout.”
Henn appealed to the public and businesses to save electricity. “We need to get the public to work with us to make sure we keep the system stable. But as soon as we know we are going to be load shedding, we will inform the public.”
She said the public should familiarise themselves with the three stages of load shedding:
* Stage one will see load shedding implemented every other day.
* Stage two will see it implemented once a day.
* Stage three will see load shedding implemented twice a day.
Cape Times