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BL Premium reports that Eskom’s board chair and the utility’s CEO have given conflicting statements about the outlook for rolling electricity outages.
Chair Mpho Makwana said that implementation of Eskom’s generation recovery plan required that “power stations are given space to execute [the plan] either by adding additional capacity ... or by creating some predictability by implementing a permanent stage 2 or 3 for the next two years”. In a media conference on Sunday, when asked to clarify Eskom’s plans for permanent load-shedding, CEO André de Ruyter said that having stage 2 or 3 in place on a continuous basis would do nothing to guarantee Eskom would not need higher stages of load-shedding at certain times when there were high levels of unplanned outages. “There are also times when the system performs well where we don’t require load-shedding at all. We are not in a position to say we can maintain certain stages of load-shedding over a prolonged period because of the lack of reliability and predictability [of the generation system]. We need the option of higher stages,” De Ruyter indicated. Later on Sunday afternoon, after Makwana’s statement about permanent load-shedding had been widely reported, Eskom sent out a short statement to reiterate De Ruyter’s comments that although Eskom had considered such a step to give more predictability to the public, “this would not be possible as it would not guarantee that load-shedding would remain at the lower levels.” The conflicting statements come weeks after De Ruyter submitted his resignation as the boss of Eskom. Eskom’s generation recovery plan shows that it will take at least two more years to add sufficient new generation capacity and to improve the efficiency of existing power stations to a level at which load-shedding might become unnecessary.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Denene Erasmus at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)
- Read too, Eskom mulls permanent blackouts for 24 months, at IOL
- En ook, Permanente beurtkrag vir volgende twee jaar beplan, by Maroela Media
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page