Only 3 days of stage 1 load shedding expected, says Eskom
Eskom says its projections show that the country is only likely to have three days of load shedding during the winter.
This projection is a huge decrease from the 31 days predicted earlier in the year, with the outbreak of Covid-19 and subsequent lockdown being one of the main contributing factors.
The power utility’s COO Jan Oberholzer says there has been a reduction in demand for electricity since the lockdown started.
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"It's been new territory, new waters that we have been sailing on.
"We had a positive in terms of when the demand went down. This reduction in demand put some positives for us in terms of maintenance. We then took advantage of this time period to do some short-term opportunistic maintenance.”
He added: "Before we had the lockdown we forecasted 31 days of stage one load shedding. What has helped in that last eight week doing this maintenance? We ran the numbers again and we are forecasting three days of stage one load shedding over the winter period that is coming.
"However, I need to say that is based on an 80% probability".
The embattled state-owned entity does not expect any stage two or three load-shedding over the winter period.