South Africans are taking to social media to express their frustration as Eskom announces that today's load shedding is going to last for 6 hours.
Around 14:00 today Eskom tweeted that the SOE will implement stage 2 load shedding from 16:00 until 22:00. Eskom blames this on the bread down of four units at Medupi, Majuba, Duvha and Lethabo power stations.
People did not waste time and responded to Eskom's tweet expressing their frustration in the manner the entity is conducting its operation.
In February this year, Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter told the nation that he set himself a target of 18 months to end the country's persistent load shedding and ramp up the utility's maintenance programme.
“Essentially what it entails is that instead of deferring scheduled maintenance,” de Ruyter said, “instead of postponing general overhauls and midlife overhauls, we intend to return to the cycle of maintaining our plants as per the original original equipment manufacturers guidelines.”
A businesslike de Ruyter warned however that the country should brace itself for an increased probability of load shedding over the medium-term.
“This is something that is going to be carefully planned,” he said. “We are going to develop a fully-fledged plan. Part of that plan is also to make sure that we are able to buy electricity from those entities that have excess electricity. We will also increase our demand management system.
#POWERALERT 2
— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) August 18, 2020
Eskom to implement Stage 2 loadshedding from 16:00 until 22:00 as power system is severely
constrained; Stage 2 will again be implemented from 09:00 until 22:00 tomorrow pic.twitter.com/Dl6Aodbghe
“We anticipate the maintenance programme will go on for about a period of 18 months.”
Eskom has been battling with unplanned breakdowns as many of its near-end term power stations have been poorly maintained, plunging the country into darkness and impacting productivity.
As part of restructuring its business, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced during his February 2019 State of the Nation Address that Eskom would be unbundled into generation, transmission, and distribution units.
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