The performance of South Africa’s power system has improved since Monday, electricity parastatal Eskom said on Thursday, in the first of a regular weekly series of updates.
The updates, Eskom added, would build on the quarterly state of the system briefings which it began in January last year.
“This is in line with Eskom’s commitment to transparent and regular communication on the power system, which is expected to be constrained for at least the next two years.
“We have been saying since late 2009 that the system would be tight in 2011 and that 2012 would be a particularly challenging year.”
Eskom said it continued to be on alert and the new weekly bulletin was designed to keep all stakeholders up to date on developments in the supply and demand of power in South Africa.
“The quarterly briefings will also continue, with the first session for 2012 scheduled to take place later this month.”
Plans
Eskom said that on Thursday the capacity available to meet this evening’s peak demand was 34 618 megawatts (MW) while demand was forecast at 31 168 MW.
Current planned maintenance stood at 4 461 MW. Unplanned outages were seen at 3 678 MW.
On Wednesday peak demand of 31 108 MW was met by available capacity of 32 601 MW.
On Monday peak demand of 30 282 MW had been met by available capacity of 30 742 MW.
“Peak demand forecast for the rest of this week is forecast at 31 303 MW on Friday, 29 762 MW on Saturday and 29 205 MW on Sunday,” Eskom noted.
During the course of Wednesday, supply from Cahora Bassa in Mozambique (1 500 MW) had been lost for approximately two hours.
“Although supply was restored the system remains constrained and customers are reminded to use electricity as efficiently as possible … We urge all South Africans to partner with us to keep the lights on. If all our customers can save 10% off their electricity usage, this will make it significantly easier to manage the power system during this challenging time,” Eskom said. — I-Net Bridge