No load shedding for City of Cape Town customers as SA moves to Stage 1

Cape Town – While the country will be on Stage 1 load shedding after Eskom reinstated power cuts, the City of Cape Town said that its customers will be exempted.

Eskom said that due to a further improvement in the power system, load shedding would be reduced to Stage 1 when it started again at 5pm, and would run until 10pm this evening.

The power utility said: “An additional generation unit has already returned to service during the day while another is expected to return later today, which will increase the generation capacity.

“The outlook for the remainder of the week is expected to improve as Eskom teams continue to work tirelessly to return more generators to service. Capacity unavailable due to breakdowns currently stands at 14 431MW while another 2 281MW is out on planned maintenance.”

The power utility added, “We are currently experiencing high evening peaks which is typical of the winter demand period. Should there be any further deterioration in the generation capacity, load shedding may be necessary, most likely between 5pm and 10pm during the winter period.”

Eskom requested that the public continued using electricity sparingly as the system remained vulnerable, and would communicate promptly should there be any further significant changes.

The City of Cape Town meanwhile said that due to its own additional capacity, there would be no load shedding, but added that “further updates will follow if the situation changes”.

The City added that news of load shedding’s return reiterated the need for national government to speed up the process which would enable municipalities to procure power directly from Independent Power Producers (IPPs).

The City and the Western Cape government are in a big push to get municipalities off relying on Eskom.

Six municipalities are participating in the Western Cape’s project to move off the national power grid and beat load shedding as part of the municipal energy resilience (MER) project.

The provincial government is collaborating with the City of Cape Town on the project.

Cape Argus