Eskom halts load-shedding ahead of New Year's Eve celebrations
- South Africans thought that they would be welcoming in the New Year under cover of darkness
- This after Eskom announced Stage 2 load-shedding earlier this week, shortly after the shift to Level 3 lockdown
- Luckily, Eskom has now announced that it has opted to suspend load-shedding after demand for power dropped
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Eskom has announced that South Africans are free to have a lit New Year's Eve after it suspended load-shedding on Thursday.
The embattled power utility explained that the demand for power has dropped ahead of the nation's long weekend.
Nevertheless, Eskom has pleaded with consumers to use electricity sparingly due to limited supply.
Source: Getty Images
The utility is now turning its focus on preparing the system for when South Africans return to work:
“Eskom requests the people of SA to continue using electricity sparingly as the system remains vulnerable and unstable."
Eskom confirmed that it will be seizing the opportunity during this period of lower demand to replenish emergency generation reserves:
“During this period Eskom will also continue to pursue increased reliability maintenance as planned. While this will put pressure on the generation plant, maintenance is necessary in order to improve the reliability and performance of the power stations.”
The utility explained that it has 9,170MW on planned maintenance, while another 11,334MW capacity is currently unavailable due to unplanned maintenance.
Earlier, Briefly.co.za reported that Eskom had announced that it will implement load-shedding Stage 2 from Tuesday, 29 December from 8pm until 5aam and again on Wednesday night.
Their tweet was captioned with: "Eskom to implement load-shedding Stage 2 starting at 22:00 overnight until 05:00, again on Wednesday night."
The news broke after Eskom released a statement on Twitter informing the people of South Africa of the load-shedding schedule.
The statement explained that the load-shedding was necessary to ensure that sufficient generation reserves were in place as the demand for electricity is expected to increase from January.
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Source: Briefly News
