Eskom said on Wednesday that power supply was tight, increasing the likelihood of power cuts, especially on the back of increased demand and a temporary nuclear-unit shutdown.
The meter on Eskom’s website indicating the status of load shedding — a term the utility uses to describe power cuts — moved into red, indicating the national electricity supply was under increasing strain.
But spokesperson Fani Zulu told Reuters that there was no need for load shedding yet.
”Thus far we think that we will go through the day without any load shedding,” he said, adding that increased use of air conditioners due to rising temperatures was adding to the strain.
Eskom has struggled to meet rising electricity demand in Africa’s biggest economy this year, owing to a lack of investment in new generation capacity.
”We are in the maintenance season and we have a number of generators that are not working, at the same time the demand is on the high side because of the high temperatures,” Zulu said.
Last week Eskom shut down a 900MW unit at its Koeberg nuclear power station due to a technical fault, adding it would take about two weeks to fix.
”We are talking of a minimum of two weeks … the team is progressing well, in line with the schedule,” Zulu said.
Zulu added that until a healthy reserve margin was reached after new capacity had been built in line with Eskom’s five-year power expansion programme, the system would continue to be tight.
”We are not out of the woods yet — we are at a state where we still have very thin spare capacity.” — Reuters