Eskom sees no load shedding on Sunday

Cape Town - Eskom said on Sunday it anticipates no load shedding for the day as it has adequate generating capacity to meet the demand in electricity.

Eskom averted load shedding on Saturday for the first time in a week loaded with problems for the electricity provider.

Acting CEO Brian Molefe told Fin24 on Friday Eskom had to deal with bomb scares, gunshots, load shedding and unkind weather gods during the second official week of winter.

“It has been a very interesting week, between the shootings and the bomb threat and losing 1 400 MW from Cahora Bassa, having some of the units trip [unit 6 of the Duvha power station lost 300 MW] as well as cloud cover over the Northern Cape, which is almost unheard of because it is a semi-desert,” he told Fin24 on Friday.

Eskom lost 300 MW from the independent solar power projects in the Northern Cape this week due to cloudy weather, while a bomb threat halted construction work at Kusile and gun shots fired at workers shut down Medupi.

Despite these setbacks Molefe said he thinks Eskom is on the recovery phase, "building up our reserves, letting the machines rest a little bit - we’ll do some maintenance over the weekend and then we will go back to our plan again on Monday".

The plan Molefe referred to was a new strategy he implemented called maintenance without load shedding, which resulted in no power cuts during the first 10 days of winter.

WATCH: How Molefe will fix Eskom's problems

On Sunday Eskom said it has enough generating capacity to meet demand.

It however appealed to power users to reduce electricity usage throughout the day, and especially between the peak periods from 06:00 to 10:00 and 17:00 to 21:00 to reduce strain on the national grid.

In winter the electricity demand peaks in the morning and evening as more electricity is used to cope with a significant drop in temperatures.

Eskom said every little bit of savings goes a long way in assisting it to manage the demand and supply of electricity and to eliminate the need for load shedding.

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