Eskom’s chilly winter outlook: Capacity shortage could last until August
According to the battling power utility, there are 26,000 megawatts available, but they foresee the winter demand reaching a higher 34,000 megawatts.
JOHANNESBURG - Eskom hopes to meet the massive generation capacity shortfall expected for electricity demand this winter.
This is the chilling warning from the power utility's generation group executive Bheki Nxumalo.
However, he said, despite all their efforts to ensure additional generation is supplied to the grid, the country would be entering this winter 3,000 megawatts less than last year.
Bheki Nxumalo, Group Executive Generation: Multiple levers are being implemented to reduce the level of loadshedding pic.twitter.com/vn6b7BBo6S
' Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) May 18, 2023
According to the battling power utility, there are 26,000 megawatts available, but they foresee the winter demand reaching a higher 34,000 megawatts.
Nxumalo said if Eskom's interventions bore no fruit in meeting the winter electricity demand, load shedding could be ramped up to Stage 8.
He added that Eskom was expecting the scenario to last until the end of August.
"If we go up to 18,000 megawatts breakdowns, there is a likelihood that we will be at Stage 7 load shedding and potentially even Stage 8, especially when we go into July and August when demand is more is higher. So this is going to be a very difficult winter, so hence our plea to customers to reduce [electricity use] where they can."
Segomoco Scheppers: Winter Outlook pic.twitter.com/B9NBWQ6CRK
' Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) May 18, 2023
Nxumalo further painted a bleak picture of the unpredictability of the power system in the country.
“If we have delays in returning units to service there's a knock-on impact because we don’t really have spare capacity on the network to move outages around. So we are really operating under very pressurised conditions to make sure that we do what we can to do the maintenance, return units on time and avoid a knock-on impact that would put us again on the backlog.”
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