Power utility Eskom announced that it would implement stage 1 load shedding from 5am until 4pm, followed by stage 2 from 4pm until 5am on Tuesday.
“It is anticipated that no load shedding will be implemented during the day from Tuesday. Eskom will publish a further update as soon as there are significant changes,” the power utility said in a statement.
“We currently have 5,032MW on planned maintenance, while another 16,390MW of capacity is unavailable due to breakdowns,” said Sikonathi Mantshantsha, Eskom spokesperson.
“Eskom will publish a further update as soon as there are any significant changes,” the utility said.
As has been the case over the past few months, Eskom said the continued implementation of load shedding was mainly due to the high levels of breakdowns and the limited emergency generation reserves.
Eskom reiterated that load shedding was implemented as a “last resort” amid a shortage in generation capacity and the need to attend to breakdowns.
Meanwhile, Eskom’s chief operations officer Jan Oberholzer will retire from the state-owned power utility in April 2023 after serving 30 years of service, News24 reports. He will be turning 65.
According to the report, it isn’t clear if the Eskom board will ask Oberholzer to train a successor.
The news of Oberholzer’s imminent retirement as Eskom’s COO comes after the arrested Hawks arrested a suspect who was sending him bomb threats.
In May, Oberholzer received bomb threats from an anonymous and unregistered cellphone number.
He told News24 that he did not pay much attention to threats that were directed to him, but when the suspect threatened to hurt his family, he immediately informed the police.
Eskom’s previous board appointed Oberholzer on 7 July 2018- almost a month after the power utility announced its first load shedding since September 2015.
Source: My Broadband, IOL, The Citizen, image from Twitter: @thepinkbrain1