South Africans can relax as Eskom announces the suspension of load shedding for the weekend starting from midnight on Friday.
But stage 2 load shedding will continue until 16:00, which will then move to stage 3 until midnight on Friday.
The utility said it expects to implement stage 2 load shedding from 5am to 4pm on Monday, after which stage 3 cuts will happen until midnight.
“The lower weekend demand has made it possible to suspend load shedding from midnight until Monday,” said Eskom.
“Since Thursday morning, Eskom teams have returned a generating unit each at Arnot, Kendal and Kriel and two units at Tutuka power stations.”
There are currently 6 234MW on planned maintenance with 13 779MW of unavailable electricity due to breakdowns.
Meanwhile, chief operations officer (COO) Jan Oberholzer warned earlier this month that South Africans will suffer from load shedding for at least 12 to 18 months.
The country would not be able to end the deliberate power outages until sufficient generating capacity was added to the electricity grid to meet the demand.
“In terms of load shedding, I believe its here to stay for a period. Up until we have the additional capacity that we can fulfil the demand of the country, while at the same time we can give that respect to the plant and maintain it properly, we are going to sit with a challenging situation,” Oberholzer explained.
On the positive side, the utility has heeded the call to explore alternative energy generation solutions, after an announcement was made on Friday that four independent power producers have been allocated land to construct clean energy plants.
Land on Eskom’s Mpumalanga power stations, Majuba and Tutuka, will be used for the clean energy projects.
They are expected to be connected to the grid within the next two to three years, Eskom said.
Source: The Citizen, Engineering News, IOL, Tech Central, image from Twitter: @CapricornFMNews
