The power utility has announced that it has suspended load shedding across the country from 8am on Sunday morning.
Eskom has announced that it has suspended load shedding across the country from 8am on Sunday morning due to the recovery of generation capacity.
In a statement posted to its various social media channels, the power utility said that it is pleased to inform the public that “load shedding will be suspended from 8am this morning as generation capacity has sufficiently recovered”.
Eskom announced on Friday that South Africans would face another weekend of power cuts after stating that it would implement stage 2 load shedding from 12pm on Friday until Sunday evening.
Since Friday evening, Eskom teams returned four generation units to service at the Medupi Power Station as coal constraints improved.
It did, however, say that the risk of load shedding still remains “elevated”.
The state-owned power utility has been dogged by failing equipment due to poor maintenance for the past 15 years, resulting in frequent periods of load shedding as generation units either break down or are taken off the grid for maintenance.
Last month energy regulator Nersa approved Eskom’s request to recoup R6-billion from consumers through tariff increases. It is estimated that electricity tariffs will be hiked by just over 10% to meet the utility’s revenue target during 2021/2022.
Eskom has previously argued that one of the major reasons for its financial woes is that Nersa has consistently awarded it lower tariff increases than it has applied for.
The regulator insists that it tries to strike a balance between Eskom’s interests and those of power consumers.
