advertisement
Facebook
X
LinkedIn
WhatsApp
Reddit

No loadshedding this Christmas says Eskom

South Africans won’t have to worry about the electricity grid faltering on account of loadshedding as they prep their Christmas dinner. Eskom has said there will be no loadshedding this season.

Since Wednesday the power utility has been on a maintenance festival similar to the one conducted earlier this year in June.

This maintenance festival is expected to continue until the second week of January and no loadshedding will take place during this time according to the utility.

A report on EWN quotes Eskom spokesperson, Khulu Phasiwe as saying, “Our system is very stable at the moment. We will not have about 8,000 megawatts, we’ll be doing a lot of maintenance on that.”

Phasiwe went on to say that because of this maintenance festival, the utility will be able to meet the surge in demand as South Africans return home for the new year.

Following a ruling last week in which the Supreme Court of Appeals ruled that Eskom awarding a tender to Avera for the replacement of steam powered generators to be unlawful, it is unclear as to whether this will have an impact on the grid.

Justice Carole Lewis pointed out in her ruling that the electricity crisis would be highly exacerbated if these generators were not attended to and pulling 8000 megawatts from the grid does sound risky.

That said, Eskom has managed to keep the lights on since September and is not expecting the grid to be strained enough to warrant loadshedding until April 2016.

advertisement

About Author

advertisement

Related News

advertisement