While power supply was expected to remain steady over the long weekend, there was still a risk of load-shedding, Eskom said on Friday.
Spokesperson Erica Johnson said in a statement: ”We don’t expect any load-shedding over the long weekend as demand patterns are historically lower during holidays.”
Yet the risk of power failures on Friday remained until the evening peak at 9pm.
Two more generators that had tripped during the week were running again on Friday morning.
Another generator at the Koeberg power station was taken off-line for maintenance and was expected to be in service again on Saturday morning.
In the meantime Eskom was using gas turbines to compensate for the generators that were out of service, the power utility said.
Prices part of the problem
Meanwhile, a business research and consulting firm said on Thursday that the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) cannot ignore Eskom’s request for a 53% tariff increase.
”If the country expects the electricity utility to resolve the current capacity crisis, it must be given the resources to do so,” Frost & Sullivan said in a statement.
”In broad terms, we haven’t had significant electricity price increases in the last five to ten years,” said energy industry manager Cornelis van der Waal.
”At the same time, there was no additional generation capacity added. The result is that South Africa now has the cheapest electricity in the world, but it also has a crisis on its hands.”
Van der Waal said low electricity prices were part of the problem.
”We must either have cheap electricity and expect disruptions or we must pay the same amount for electricity as the rest of the world and then we can demand a good service.” – Sapa