JOHANNESBURG - Eskom has announced that it has significantly reduced the risk of loadshedding for the coming winter season due to the successful short-term maintenance programme during the lockdown period.
Eskom chief operations officer Jan Oberholzer said today that the impact of Covid-19, and especially the lockdown, had reduced demand by an average of 6 000 megawatts (MW) up to a maximum of 11 000MW.
Oberholzer said this had created the opportunity to execute additional short term maintenance to address emergent issues, including those that were contributing to partial load losses.
“Before we had the lockdown, we forecasted 31 days of Stage 1 loadshedding. We are now forecasting 3 days of Stage 1 loadshedding over the winter period that is coming. However, I need to say that is based on an 80 percent probability,” Oberholzer said.
%%%twitter https://twitter.com/hashtag/EskomSOS2020?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#EskomSOS2020 #Eskom pic.twitter.com/caSsDHs6tZ
— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA)
“It’s important to say that due to neglect of our system over the last decade, the system remains unpredictable and very unreliable. We still have trips and breakouts.
Oberholzer said planned maintenance had roughly doubled to more than 9 000MW on occasion since the lockdown.
However, he said the risk of the grid being overwhelmed would remain until next year due to Eskom’s, especially unpredictable and unreliable system as more industries resume operations.
Key Challenges:
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— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA)
“Although we forecast at this point in time the possibility of 3 days of loadshedding, I need to say that the risk of loadshedding remains because of unpredictability and unreliability,” Oberholzer said.
%%%twitter https://twitter.com/hashtag/EskomSOS2020?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#EskomSOS2020 #Eskom pic.twitter.com/hoh0mJ586E
— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA)
“This unfortunately will remain up until we have dealt with the system in terms of reliability maintenance and what we foresee stays the same as we said in January up until the middle of 2021.”
%%%twitter https://twitter.com/hashtag/EskomSOS2020?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#EskomSOS2020 #Eskom pic.twitter.com/L6m7KaQKXW
— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA)
Watch the full state of the system address below:
[Live] Eskom State of the System Address 2020 https://t.co/cby4xRQrVp
— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) May 21, 2020
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