Eskom has announced it will continue to implement stage 1 load-shedding until further notice.
The announcement brings with it a mix of good and bad news.
The utility originally intended to rotate between stage 1 and stage 2 over the weekend and the first two days of the coming week, with two 11-hour suspensions of the power cuts on Sunday and Tuesday.
Itdid not provide any explanation for the change in plan.
Eskom’s most recent evening peak statistics — for Friday, 17 March 2023 — showed it had total demand of 27,432MW at peak.
At the same time, it had 28,530MW of generation capacity available, an excess of 1,098MW.
However, because the utility was load-shedding around 1,834MW of electricity, it only sent out 25,598MW at peak.
It did not have to run any of its own or IPP open-cycle gas turbines.
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