South Africans in various parts of the country again had to endure scheduled loadshedding over the weekend, as Eskom continues to battle to meet the demand for power.
The state owned power company has said that there’s a good chance of no loadshedding at least in the early part of this week, as the weekend power cuts helped the utility provider build up capacity. Yesterday evening, it warned customers via Twitter that loadshedding might return tonight.
Probability for load shedding is low during the day on Monday with a possible increased risk during the evening peak, 5pm to 10pm.
— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) November 23, 2014
This morning, however, spokesperson Andrew Etzinger has told journalists that the firm is not expecting power outages in the “early” part of this week.
Yesterday, Eskom called on the help of some of its biggest customers including Anglo American and Arcelor Mittal to reduce to reduce their energy consumption by at least 10% between 3 pm and 8 pm to help relieve the load as it started cutting 2 000 megawatts from 12 pm.
“We are certainly taking strain and we apologize to our customers, we know there has been a lot of frustration,” Eskom’s Andrew Etzinger said on SABC radio’s SAfm. The preservation measures have “put us in a position where in the coming week we’ve got a good chance of coming through without loadshedding, despite quite a lot of pressure from our supply chain.”