State-owned power utility Eskom will scale down its plans to repair power plants during winter to ensure the country has sufficient electricity supply during this period, Energy Minister Dikobe Ben Martins said during a New Age breakfast briefing, held in Midrand, Johannesburg, last month.
He added that power station maintenance would be reduced “as much as possible over winter”.
Additionally, Department of Energy (DoE) deputy director-general Dr Wolsey Barnard, while addressing the 2014 Power & Electricity World Africa conference, in Johannesburg, in March, stressed that the utility had undertaken the bulk of its maintenance from December 2013 to January 2014 to ensure that minimal maintenance would be required during winter.
“We are all well aware that there is a tight balance between supply and demand. . . to date, we have only had one day of load-shedding in March. The grid is going to be under tremendous pressure during winter; however, the DoE does not foresee that there will be any load-shedding during this period,” stated Barnard.
Further, he warned that the grid would remain strained over the next 18 to 24 months, but emphasised that no load-shedding was expected to take place over this period unless “extraordinary situations occur, such as the reoccurrence of wet coal supplies entering the power generation system”. READ MORE
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