World Cup: Firms may sacrifice power

Johannesburg - Eskom is confident it will have enough power to avoid load shedding during the 2010 Fifa World Cup, a spokesperson said on Monday.

"We have an adequate reserve margin to see us through peak demand during that time," Andrew Etzinger said.

The parastatal's projections were that peak demand - in the early evening hours on the coldest night during the World Cup - would be about 37 200 megawatt.

"The capacity available is about 40 000 megawatt, which is a comfortable reserve margin."

Eskom expected tourists to push electricity demand up by 270 megawatt.

It was important for the company and consumers not to become complacent though, Etzinger cautioned.

"We have to remain vigilant, however remote the possibility is that we may run into problems."

Eskom would be screening a new World Cup-inspired power alert system on local television until July 16. It would ask consumers to adjust their consumption according to the country's supply status.

General manager of Eskom's energy efficiency demand side management Nosipho Maphumulo said: "It is anticipated that more than 200 000 tourists will arrive in South Africa during the next few weeks, and although electricity supply is expected to be sufficient over this period, cold winter temperatures combined with high electricity demand [are] likely to place Eskom under additional pressure.

"We would like to communicate the message that preventing load shedding will benefit each one of us, enabling locals and foreigners alike to enjoy themselves and embrace World Cup fever in South Africa," she said in a statement.

Etzinger said this was merely a contingency plan.

Should there be electricity supply problems during the tournament, Etzinger said Eskom would first contact large industrial users the power supplier had special contracts with - including some mines - to lower their power usage.

"After that, we will ask households to do the same with the power alerts."

Eskom also intended to use print advertisements in in-flight and other magazines, fold-up tables on incoming planes and bill folders in restaurants to display power alert reminders.

Etzinger said Eskom was busy wrapping up its maintenance programme on power plants across the country, and that the last work would be completed before the World Cup.

"Over the past couple of months we took as many generators offline [to do maintenance work] as we can without putting the system at risk . Within the next few weeks, we will put all plants back into service so we'll have a full service during the cup."

- Sapa