adminJOHANNESBURG — The national power grid was severely constrained Wednesday afternoon, resulting in Eskom declaring a system emergency. The constrained conditions are expected to continue on Thursday, particularly between 17.30PM and 18.30PM. If the demand does not decrease this could result in Eskom invoking its emergency protocols and implementing rotational load reduction.
Although Eskom has adequate generating capacity to meet the demand during the day, the challenge is over the short sharp evening peak — particularly between 17.30PM and 18.30PM — when electricity demand increase up to 36,000 MW. The increase is predominantly due to the use of space heating, geysers and cooking that takes place during this time.
Eskom calls on all consumers to delay the usage of heaters and to switch off geysers, pool pumps and all non-essential appliances as the risk of load reduction is high during this period.
It remains important for all customers to beat the peak from 17.00PM to 21.00PM this winter, by maintaining or achieving 10 percent electricity savings especially in the commercial and residential sectors.
Commercial customers, particularly shopping centres and office blocks, can make the biggest difference by switching off non-essential lights and not to leave office equipment such as photocopiers and computers in standby mode after hours.
Eskom will utilise all necessary emergency resources at its disposal to keep the lights on, but should the demand not decrease, load reduction will be implemented as a measure of last resort to protect the national grid from a total shutdown.
In the event that load reduction becomes necessary, Eskom will use the published load shedding schedules which are available on the Eskom website. — Fin24
derick.khumalo