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Eskom changes mind on load shedding - as it happened

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03 Feb 2015

Very interesting article on sister publication City Press's website.
HOW TO LIVE IN THE DARK

03 Feb 2015

Phindile Baleni who resigned as energy regulator Nersa's CEO yesterday is joining the Gauteng Premier's office.


FULL STORY

03 Feb 2015

Schussler: If one looks at the total debt of municipalities that customers - from government to households - owe for over 90 days (when debt is considered bad debt) it is now R75bn and another R4bn that is over 60 days old! That is 27.5% of total money going into municipalities. If collected we would not have to have an increase in municipal fees for nearly three years.

03 Feb 2015

Economist Mike Schussler: It is clear that non-payment of electricity (same for other services such as water) is a huge problem and is causing us all to have problems as infrastructure building is the first thing that suffers as is maintenance of the infrastructure. 

03 Feb 2015

Fin24 contacted several businesses in the Blackheath area who said they did not experience any outages in their area today, so the incident was clearly quite limited.

03 Feb 2015

Eskom's response to Fin24 Blackheath: At the early hours this morning (just before 04:00) a member of the public vandalised Eskom equipment at the Dennemere Substation.  This led to an electricity supply interruption to the Blackheath area impacting approximately 2151 customers.  Eskom technical staff responded to the fault immediately and have been on site since this morning trying to restore the supply.  We have managed to connect some parts via alternative supply and have isolated the fault to pick up most of the affected customers.  We have to however ensure a safe work environment for the Eskom Operators first, therefore isolation of the substation.   

03 Feb 2015

Fin24 user Gert Burger think it's time for Eskom to take action against those who just abuse electricity. "Residences bypassing their prepaid meters and running air conditioners 24/7 (talking about big ones in every  compartment in the house ), whilst the honest home owners struggle to make a living. Is it really that difficult to investigate culprits and to establish on your system when did they last buy electricity"

03 Feb 2015

EE Publishers MD and energy expert Chris Yelland talks about his switch to energy efficient technologies and how it contributes to lower electricity bills and bigger savings:

03 Feb 2015

From Fin24 user Johan Botha: I cannot agree more with the previous Fin24 user post. Eskom has much to do when it comes to collecting money owed to it, and likewise the government that keeps on poking its nose into private sector business instead of simply doing what their mandate states, to govern, whilst clinging to a parastatal which is paralysed and whose services (by quoting its CEO) is something to "pray" about every day.

Why find it so difficult as a politician to stretch out a hand to the private sector, who are more than willing and capable of feeding in to the grid much needed energy that goes wasted otherwise? Why do we have shopping centres filled with audio visual equipment that needs to be constantly on, (never mind connected and just on standby)? Why can't a person ask someone to demonstrate a product, rather than having it wasting away precious electricity for the duration of that businesses trading hours? Why do the entire Game Store in our mall for instance, have to display every fan, TV PC and audio system in store in its working capacity? Why do buildings use lighting when it is clear sunshine outside? Why do we find businesses in deserted malls and shopping districts during night time displaying stuff with lighting through the night for nobody to make use of?

If geyser regulators are compulsory and these regulators can be installed and incorporated to all unnecessary electrical devices in especially peek times and if it could be utilised for businesses leaving on power unnecessarily, if households can be enticed to make use of renewable energy by granting subsidies instead of wasting trillions on nuclear power plants that takes decades to complete then one may just turn South Africa's sinking electricity ship in crisis around.

ADD YOUR VOICE

03 Feb 2015

Eskom changed its tune on load shedding today because South Africans heard their call and conserved electricity. A simple group effort when called upon can help everyone avoid load shedding. 
Read Eskom’s tips on how to conserve and maybe we can avoid future load shedding scenarios.

03 Feb 2015

Eskom says that office aircon systems are the biggest issue to saving electricity. This video gives tips for offices to bring down their electricity consumption through better aircon systems and usage techniques.

03 Feb 2015

Theft combat advice for Eskom from a Fin24 user: Do me a favour and go look in Lenasia, particularly Mecca Street how much electricity is being stolen via a mini sub station - live wires running over the street into informal settlements. Last year alone two children were electrocuted and despite complaints from the local business owners, Eskom did nothing!

03 Feb 2015

Khulu Phasiwe: Stage 2 generally for us as a company and as a country is not something we would really like to go into. Even stage 1, because stage 1 is just us trying to protect the system from collapsing. But you don’t want to go beyond stage 1, because obviously it means that more people are affected and for a much longer duration of time.

03 Feb 2015

Khulu Phasiwe: Also in the evening, when we issue the TV notices, we do see a reduction.

03 Feb 2015

Khulu Phasiwe: Every time when we are experiencing serious problems like now, we do see a serious reduction when you do issue a notice or alert.

03 Feb 2015

Eskom's Khulu Phasiwe: We do feel South Africans are coming to the party [in terms of conserving electricity] and we would like to take this opportunity to thank the many households and residents and commercial and industry customers who are assisting us in terms of reducing the load.  

03 Feb 2015

Soweto alone owes Eskom R4bn; another R2bn is lost to power theft.

<p>Soweto alone owes Eskom R4bn; another R2bn is lost to power theft.</p><p></p>
FULL STORY

03 Feb 2015

Economist Mike Schussler on non-paying Eskom clients: If the all the users paid, Eskom would have some more money to do things to avoid load shedding.  (Not all the time but we would have it less often.)

03 Feb 2015

From a Fin24 user who calls himself Soul Survivor: Load shedding has become a pariah to all South Africans except those in government and those wealthy enough to afford generators. It is now time for the powers that be to come clean and explain what exactly is the problem.

I and many others in our town have planned around the blackouts, only to be fooled and times changed. If you Eskom is serious about conserving energy switch off most street lights particularly highways, municipalities that are lit up like Christmas trees, office blocks likewise, car dealerships another culprit, stop these people above and you will save more than enough power and stop load shedding.

Restaurants in particular are suffering desperately, as they cannot trade in any way, their landlord still wants the rent come month end, the food that gets spoilt another loss, the loss of patrons' overheads must be paid, though your income has halved.  

Come on now, it is time to stop shifting the blame from apartheid. Stop giving yourselves bonuses and increases every year, that alone should give you enough funds to pay your debts regarding coal and diesel.

ADD YOUR VOICE

03 Feb 2015

Phasiwe: Eskom is really grateful to South Africans who have heeded the call to use electricity sparingly. This is the main reason why load shedding stopped early at 14:00 last week.

03 Feb 2015

Phasiwe: The Koeberg Unit 1 had been synchronised and is going through the processes to go back online, which should be on Thursday.

03 Feb 2015

Eskom warning: The system remains constrained. Should anything unexpected happen it may necessitate the need to go into load shedding.

03 Feb 2015

Eskom spokesperson Khulu Phasiwe told Fin24 shortly before ending stage 1 load shedding that the call for people to use less power had brought down the demand significantly.

03 Feb 2015

Eskom on Andrew Etzinger's move: In view of the difficulties that Eskom is currently facing and government intervention to help the company turn things around through the War Room, a decision was taken to have Khulu Phasiwe doing more of the spokesperson role while Andrew concentrates on the energy demand side management as it is one of the key focus areas in the five point plan.

03 Feb 2015

Yelland: Financial problems, declining sales, delays in power stations to come on line, lack of availability of generation capacity, load shedding and keeping the economy short of electricity, cosnatnt urging to reduce demand - all ingredients for a perfect storm.
LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH FIN24

03 Feb 2015

Fin24's sister publication City Press reported on Sunday that Eskom sketched a gloomy picture of South Africa's power generating capacity at a briefing to Cabinet – and the US embassy in Pretoria has drawn up an evacuation plan partly designed to get its staff out safely if the lights go off in the country once and for all.


FULL ARTICLE

03 Feb 2015

Chris Yelland is very distrurb by the ANC's decision to bury the independent system market operator bill that would have transformed the electricity sector.
FULL STORY

03 Feb 2015

Listen to Fin24's interview with energy expert Chis Yelland on the energy situation in SA.

03 Feb 2015

Be part of out Live updates.

Share opinions, energy savings tips, pics with fellow Fin24 users.

03 Feb 2015

Meanwhile, energy regulator Nersa's CEO Phindile Baleni resigned after four years in the hot seat.

FULL STORY

03 Feb 2015

All the factors adding even more strain on the grid:

At Tutuka, Unit 6 experienced a condenser tube leak last night and had to be taken offline;

Duvha Unit 6 is on outage so that repairs can be done on its oil cooler;

Work is ongoing at Koeberg’s Unit 1 which experienced an earth fault on the generator transformer on Sunday;

In Cape Town, three mini substations have been vandalised, affecting industrial customers in the Blackheath area.

03 Feb 2015

Full Eskom statement:

POWER ALERT 1

Eskom will implement stage 1 load shedding from 10:00 today, which is likely to continue until 22:00 this evening.

This is due to a shortage of generation capacity as several units are currently on unplanned outages due to technical faults.

At Tutuka, Unit 6 experienced a condenser tube leak last night and had to be taken offline; Duvha Unit 6 is on outage so that repairs can be done on its oil cooler; while work is ongoing at Koeberg’s Unit 1 which experienced an earth fault on the generator transformer on Sunday.

Customers are notified that in Cape Town, three mini substations have been vandalised, affecting industrial customers in the Blackheath area, as a result, customers in that area will have power outages for most of today.

Eskom has been working on urgent repairs since the incident occurred early this morning. We ask communities to desist from vandalising Eskom property as it not only interrupts customers’ power supply but is also very dangerous and can lead to the loss of life. We urge customers who have any information regarding this incident to contact Eskom’s Crime Line on 0800 11 27 22.  

The power system remains constrained and will remain so for the rest of this week. Any extra load or faults in the system may necessitate the need to go into load shedding. We therefore urge all electricity customers to reduce their consumption in order to reduce the severity of load shedding.  

Eskom calls on all customers to reduce the load on the electricity grid by urgently switching off geysers, air conditioners, pool pumps and all non-essential appliances throughout the day, which will reduce electricity demand. Commercial customers, particularly shopping centres and office blocks, can also make a big difference by switching off non-essential lights and not leaving office equipment such as photocopiers and computers in standby mode after hours.  

Eskom customers can check load shedding schedules on the Eskom website (http://loadshedding.eskom.co.za) or contact our customer call centre on 0860 037 566.

Municipal customers are urged to contact their local authorities.  

Eskom will provide regular updates on the status of the power system throughout the day.

03 Feb 2015

Eskom said the Koeberg unit will be fully functional by the weekend; however, it will then be shut down next Monday for four months of maintenance.

FULL STORY

03 Feb 2015

The latest load shedding comes as Unit 1 at Koeberg nuclear power station went down over the weekend due to a technical glitch.

FULL STORY

03 Feb 2015

Blackheath Industrial area in Cape Town will be without power for most of the day after three mini substations were vandalised in the early hours of this morning, according to Eskom.


03 Feb 2015

Yes, Andrew Etzinger has been relieved of his duties as spokesperson to focus on integrated demand management.

READ: Lessons for Eskom's new spokesperson

03 Feb 2015

New spokesperson Khulu Phasiwe said the system is severely constrained, thus the need for load shedding.

03 Feb 2015

Eskom announced on Tuesday that it will implement Stage 1 load shedding from 10:00 to 22:00.
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