South Africans should prepare for a cold and dark winter as Eskom says it may have to implement Stage 8 level of load shedding in the next few months if its interventions are not effective.
However, the power utility also sought to ease fears of a national blackout, saying the risk of a total grid collapse was “very low”.
Stage 8 power cuts would require up to 8 000 megawatts to be shed from the national grid, and could mean up to 12 hours without electricity in a 24-hour day.
Eskom has not yet gone beyond Stage 6 but many households and businesses are already facing electricity outages of more than 10 hours a day as South Africa faces its worst power crisis on record.
“This is going to be a very difficult winter,” group executive for transmission, Segomoco Scheppers, said during Eskom’s State of the System briefing yesterday.
The sukkeling utility has intensified its rotational power cuts programme to Stage 6 load shedding to prevent the grid from total collapse, as unplanned breakdowns amount to more than 16 000W of generating capacity.
The utility said that should load losses deteriorate to 18 000 MW and the forecast winter peak demand materialise, this could result in load shedding beyond Stage 6 driven by a variance of 4 000MW in the Unplanned Capability Loss Factor.
Eskom’s acting CEO Calib Cassim said the winter outlook indicated a significant risk of demand and supply imbalance.
“The winter outlook indicates an increased risk of supply shortfall against expected demand, with our worst-case scenario indicating that load shedding could intensify to Stage 8 if our interventions are not successful,” Cassim explained.
“However, the increase in load shedding levels does not mean there is a greater risk of a national blackout; instead, load shedding is one of the processes we use to prevent such an occurrence by managing the demand for electricity at a given time.
“Efforts to reduce and ultimately end load shedding require us to work together to drive interventions both on the supply side [improving available generation] and demand side [reducing peak demand].”
Cassim acknowledged the devastating impact on the economy of intensified load shedding, despite several positive developments to address Eskom’s challenges.
Eskom group executive for generation, Bheki Nxumalo, said the Generation Operational Recovery Programme was being implemented to sustainably recover the performance of the power plants.
But, Nxumalo said that ultimately, mense must try and gebruik less electricity to help protect the grid.
“Despite all these efforts, more needs to be done to reduce the level of electricity demand, specifically during the peak,” he said.
“We believe the public can greatly support efforts to mitigate the impact of the energy crisis, especially over the [upcoming] winter period.”
dailyvoice@inl.co.za