Eskom now has enough electricity to meet the full national demand, it said on Sunday after days of power shortages that saw rolling blackouts across the country.
Although the probability of similar outages on Monday is ”very low”, Eskom is still requesting the public to use electricity efficiently and switch off non-essential appliances, said spokesperson Fani Zulu.
While there might well be areas still experiencing power-supply interruptions, these will be localised problems not related to the shedding of capacity, he said.
There has been no need for load-shedding — the deliberate cutting off of electricity when demand exceeds supply — since Thursday night, Zulu added.
He said the power company has made ”good progress” on the supply side since then.
The electricity crisis was sprung on an unsuspecting public on Thursday morning.
Eight Eskom units went on an ”unplanned outage”, resulting in a shortage of 4 600 megawatts.
One of these was Koeberg’s Unit One, which was out of action from the early hours of Thursday morning when its turbine tripped. Already, 4 900 megawatts were not available because several other units were going through maintenance.
Two of the units — Kriel and Matuba — were brought back on Thursday evening, said Zulu. On Friday, another six units — including one on a maintenance outage — were returned to service.
”This places us in a situation where there is enough on the system to meet the demand — even before we talk about Koeberg,” he said.
He hoped to give the ”final word” on the status of the power supply countrywide later on Sunday or on Monday.
Last week, Eskom expected that blackouts of two-and-a-half hours at a time could continue throughout this week. — Sapa