Load shedding here to stay

 

November 19, 2007

Zululand OBSERVER

	Load shedding here to stay Ronelle Ramsamy LOAD shedding will continue for the next five to seven years while South Africa's power supply infrastructure is upgraded to cope with increased demand. This is according to the country's power supplier Eskom, following further planned power outages countrywide last week. While the City of uMhlathuze was not affected by load shedding, Eskom's system of rotating existing power supplies took place in most parts of the country as a result of a national capacity shortage. According to Eskom, additional failures had occurred on generating units over their period of planned maintenance. The Summer season is when Eskom schedules routine maintenance on its generating plant, transmission and distribution infrastructure. 'All emergency energy resources have been exploited, which include the use of Eskom's gas turbines and buying back power from large industrial customers. 'However, this is not sufficient to address the shortfall, hence the need for load shedding,' said an Eskom statement. In the past, when Eskom had high excess capacity, they would have comfortably gone through the convergence of events such as maintenance, unplanned outages, load losses, and an increase in demand without affecting end users. However, over the last decade, South Africa has experienced a steady growth in the demand for electricity on the back of robust economic growth. Exhausted The power utility said the continued growth in the economy had exhausted Eskom's surplus electricity generation capacity and reduced their reserve margin progressively. 'We expect the reserve margin to continue on a downward trend for the next five to seven years until new base-load power plant is built. 'Eskom has accelerated the implementation of its capacity expansion programme and will invest R150-billion in the upgrading of South Africa's power supply infrastructure. 'The biggest percentage of the expenditure will go towards improving generation capacity through, among others, building new power stations,' said the statement. Eskom urges all businesses to turn off all non-essential lighting and office equipment during the day and evening. Residential consumers are also encouraged to switch off their geysers and non-essential equipment, especially during peak periods (7am - 10am and 6pm - 9pm). Load shedding schedules are available on the Eskom website: www.eskom.co.za and customers can contact Eskom on 086 0037566.