Eskom hopeful of no load-shedding during winter
Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan says Eskom will do its utmost to keep the lights on during the coming winter months.
Should the dreaded rolling blackouts return, the struggling power utility will try and keep it to Stage 1.
Gordhan, Eskom chairperson Jabu Mabuza and CEO Phakamani Hadebe briefed media on the state of the power grid at the Lethabo Power Station in the Vaal on Wednesday.
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“We can today demonstrate to you that we have a winter plan because Eskom considers winter to have started on May 1. The key point here is both the plan, the discipline and rigour that it requires to make sure that implementation of the plan occurs. We have as our aim, that there should no load-shedding from this point onwards, but that is an aim. If there is load-shedding, it will be kept to a maximum of 26 days from now until the end of August,” Gordhan said.
Last month, Eskom implemented stage 4 load-shedding amid concern that the power grid could collapse.
Eskom Group Manager Bernard Mokgoro said the main causes of the blackouts were ailing infrastructure, a diesel shortage and Cyclone Idai.
“Unfortunately that week of the 13 March, we started losing a lot of units because of what we call boiler tube leaks, because of the high number of boiler tube leaks, normally we get about 10-12 boiler tube leaks a month, we had 16 in one week. This is way out of the norm.”
“The second issue because of the same issue, we ran diesel and by Thursday we had depleted all diesel we had in stock.”