‘No power cuts at the weekend’
There are no plans for load shedding at the weekend but it’s still on the cards for today, says Eskom.
While there are no plans for power cuts over the weekend, load shedding is still on the cards for today, the same day that Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe will roll out the long-awaited Integrated Energy Resource Plan (IRP).
Eskom board chairperson Jabu Mabuza said last night that the floundering power utility would implement stage 1 load shedding but did not foresee the need for further power cuts after 11pm tonight.
Mabuza was briefing the media on the state of the power utility after it started implementing load shedding on Wednesday due to faulty generating units.
He said the decision was not taken lightly and apologised to the country, particularly for the short notice given, but that it was taken as last resort in order to “balance supply and demand”.
He said the electricity system is dynamic with partial losses that can be fixed quickly, adding that they’ve activated their emergency command centre which will see the manual feeding of coal to Medupe while they fix the broken conveyor belt which is partially to blame for the problems.
But despite the attempts at putting on a brave face, Mabuza revealed just how precarious electricity supply really is. “We can never ever say there will be no load shedding. We can never give that guarantee. When we reach the 10 500 megawatts we are in the danger zone. The snapping of the conveyor belt is what pushed us over to the other side.”
While Mantashe rolls out the IRP today, Eskom staff seemingly would have been hard at work for hours already fixing another problem at Kusile power station.
Video footage of a coal silo, allegedly silo one at Kusile, shows coal cascading down the side of the conveyor belt-fed silo after allegedly being overfilled.
It is understood the top floor of the bunker was flooded and threatened one or more of the boilers being shut down.
Energy expert Chris Yelland said: “I do believe we do not need any new coal whatsoever. That’s not to say we should switch off coal-fired power stations but we should simply let them come to their end of natural life.”