Eskom: Stable power supply saw manufacturing increase
Three months without any load shedding has resulted in an improved manufacturing output, power utility Eskom said on Monday.
“Output rose 0.9 percent year on year compared to a revised -0.3 percent in August,” CEO Brian Molefe told reporters at a briefing in Johannesburg.
“Factory production jumped 2.2 percent and was up 1.4 percent in the three months leading to September 2015.”
Molefe said the power utility only implemented a two-hour load shedding period on 14 September, which was an “extreme incident as there was loss of a number of generating units.”
Eskom would embark on a “festival of maintenance” this summer, and would do so without implementing load shedding.
“Maintenance schedule will start as there is low demand in summer. During the severe heat wave experienced in early October, Eskom was able to perform maintenance without load shedding,” said Mplefe.
There was a three month supply of coal stock available presently, he said.