Eskom urges South Africans to reduce electricity usage

After a few days of silence, Eskom is back, and is serving us notice again. Unfortunately, the embattled power supplier has dropped an ominous announcement on Thursday 17 September that hints that we haven’t seen the last of load shedding just yet.

While they said that there is no load shedding scheduled for either Thursday or Friday 18 September, they conceded that their systems are currently experiencing some difficulty, and we all know what that usually mean.

In the statement, Eskom asked that customers reduce their electricity consumption to relieve pressure on the national grid.

“While no load shedding is expected today and tomorrow, Eskom would like to request the public to reduce the usage of electricity as the power system is currently constrained,” the statement read.

“Two generation units were forced to shut down over the past 24-hours, adding to those currently on breakdown and on planned maintenance.” They said that breakdowns currently amount to 10 305 MW of generation capacity while another 5 903 MW is out on planned maintenance.

There has been no load shedding since last week, when Eskom revelled in success having restored a number of its “ageing and unreliable” units to service. It seems that when one is fixed, another goes down though, and Eskom have again warned that if they don’t ease the pressure currently being felt by the grid, they will indeed have to reimplement rolling blackouts.

“Should there be any significant increase in breakdowns, load shedding may have to be implemented at short notice. Eskom teams are working around the clock to return as many of these generation units to service as possible,” they said.

Eskom said that they will communicate timeously should it become necessary to implement load shedding. Collectively, Eskom, we’re all rooting for you. 

Main Image: Brand South Africa