Following six days of consecutive loadshedding, Eskom announced that loadshedding would be suspended for the rest of the week.
The utility has been battling failing generation units since early in July and those failures came to a head last week Friday.
Since then Eskom reports that it has managed to return four generation units to service.
“These generation units returned more than 1 500MW capacity to the system. This took total generation capacity returned to the system since 10th July to more than 3 500MW,” Eskom wrote in a power alert on Thursday evening.
With this capacity added back to the grid, Eskom says it now has more than 34 000MW of available capacity. Emergency reserves have also been replenished.
This meant that Eskom was able to suspend loadshedding at 22:00 on Thursday evening but South Africa is seemingly not out of the loadshedding woods just yet.
“While we are able to suspend this current period of loadshedding, Eskom urges the public to continue reducing the usage of heating appliances, geysers and other appliances as the system remains unpredictable and unreliable,” the utility wrote.
For the time being at least, the lights are set to stay on. Should that change we will be sure to let you know.
Eskom suspends loadshedding tonight from 22:00 pic.twitter.com/7hE8sP3At2
— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) July 16, 2020
[Image – CC 0 Pixabay]
