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Cape Town - Eskom has pleaded not guilty regarding various power outages reported on Monday.
"Eskom is not load shedding," an Eskom liaison officer told Fin24 by mid-afternoon on Monday.
He explained that in areas where power outages were experienced on Monday, they would have been caused at municipal level and certainly not because of Eskom load shedding.
READ: No more load shedding for now
"Consumers must, therefore, check with their local municipality about these localised outages," he told Fin24.
He was responding to a Fin24 query after several users vented their frustration about continued power outages on Monday.
Following an article in which Eskom said it did not anticipate any load shedding on Monday, Fin24 user John Culverwell wrote that Eskom is simply not telling the truth.
"There has been an outage in my area - Robindale, Johannesburg - since 18:00 on Sunday evening and by 13:30 on Monday the power was still off," he wrote.
For many users it was unacceptable that City Power, Johannesburg, had no details of the load shedding schedule on its website.
"How ridiculous and unacceptable is it that City Power, Johannesburg, the biggest metropolitan area in South Africa, has absolutely no details of the load shedding schedule on its website," wrote Fin24 user Margie Wilson.
"And yet, if you are a few days late in paying your electricity account, you are threatened with being cut off. It just does not make any sense."
Fin24 user Dylan called Eskom's claim of not anticipating load shedding on Monday as "absolute BS".
He wrote to say "load shedding had started again in Randpark Ridge at 11:45 on Monday morning".
Eskom, which started with load shedding on Sunday after a silo at Majuba power station cracked on Saturday and later collapsed, warned that outages could last the rest of the week.
In a statement on Monday afternoon, Eskom said it was not load shedding on Monday and did not anticipate any load shedding on Tuesday as additional units have been returned from maintenance.
"If customers experience power outages during this period, we advise that they contact their electricity providers as it could be a localised problem."
Eskom said the risk of load shedding has reduced significantly and the prognosis for the week is better than expected. However, it warned that the system will be under extreme pressure on Wednesday and Thursday as the water reserves that were built up over the weekend for its peaking plants will be depleted.
"Eskom is pleased to announce that work at Majuba Power Station has progressed better than anticipated. Teams have worked non-stop since the incident on Saturday and have been able to connect coal feeder units which have enabled us to ramp up the supply from 600 MW to 1 200 MW."
VIEW: Eskom's briefing on the Majuba crisis
Eskom said a crack in a coal storage silo on Saturday afternoon caused the loss of 1 800 MW. The silo stores over 10 000 tonnes of coal.
This affected coal supplies to all six units at the power station.
The silo, which was last inspected in September 2013, should not have collapsed, said energy expert Chris Yelland.
“It is basically steel and concrete,” he said. “If correctly designed and implemented, it should last a lifetime of the power station, something like 50 years. So the fact that it has failed after 20 years – it was constructed in 1994 – is very unusual.”
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- Fin24
