South Africans reprieve from load shedding over the Easter weekend was short-lived after Eskom confirmed that the country will go back to stage 2 from 5pm on Saturday.
Stage 2 will remain until 5am on Sunday, but load shedding will thereafter be suspended again.
Eskom’s interim spokesperson, Daphne Mokwena confirmed that the power utility will provide an update on Sunday afternoon or as soon as any significant changes occur.
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Load shedding was briefly suspended, due to a lower demand for electricity, according to Eskom.
Eskom’s recent update shows that the grid has around 24 205 megawatts (MW) available to distribute, but the country’s demand was sitting at around 25 122MW.
As such, the utility have been preparing to shed a load of 1525MW of power.
Winter load shedding
South Africans could likely experience more rolling blackouts during winter.
Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa confirmed on Thursday load shedding was more likely to happen in the cold season due to the increased demand for electricity.
According to Ramokgopa, the Energy Availability Factor (EAF) was currently at about 53%, which explains the deficit gap between demand and supply.
He said “tough decisions” have to be made in order to address the shortfall of 6 000MW in generation capacity and pointed out that there were options available for Cabinet to decide on.
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The minister also highlighted that the underperformance of Eskom’s power stations was causing the open-cycle gas turbines (OCGTs) to be operated at a much higher rate.
The OCGTs were running at a great expense to the country because Eskom was consuming a lot of diesel.
“They come at a great cost… there’s a question to the fiscus [regarding] the actual amount that you use to buy diesel and then there’s the cost of not running them to the South African economy. These are difficult choices that are confronting us,” Ramokgopa said.
South Africa’s peak demand is usually between 5.30am and 8am as well as between 6pm and 8pm daily, while it plateaus during the day.
State of disaster
Meanwhile, government has officially terminated the national state of disaster it implemented just under two months ago to deal with the energy crisis.
Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Thembi Nkadimeng, gazetted the termination on Wednesday.
However, the interventions and support measures already in place, as an accelerated response at the time the state of disaster was declared, will remain in place.
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