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Claims that South Africa’s electricity grid is near collapse are false, Eskom insisted on Tuesday evening.
The struggling power utility was compelled to calm growing public concern around the matter and issued a statement denying social media posts that raised alarm about an imminent national grid blackout.
Read: Further delays at Koeberg spell more trouble for Eskom
“Eskom refutes these claims and would like to assure South Africans that there are measures in place to avoid the collapse of the power system. Load shedding is one of these mechanisms,” it said.
Despite the country’s economy battling reoccurring stage 6 load shedding – which sees households and businesses without power for up to 10 hours a day – Eskom says there’s an “extremely low likelihood” of a national blackout.
In the case a blackout does occur, the utility says it has “robust contingency plans in place”.
“The grid is by no means at a higher or imminent risk of a collapse, and it would take an unforeseen and sudden sequence of events that results in a cascading collapse of the transmission or generation system, leading to a complete loss of supply across the country,” Eskom said.
“Eskom continues to drive generation recovery initiatives which are aimed at preventing the current performance from deteriorating in the short-term, and improving the overall performance of the generation fleet in the long-term,” it added.
Durban won’t have lower load shedding from next week
Meanwhile, starting next Thursday (25 May) residents and businesses of the eThekwini Municipality (greater Durban) can expect a shift in their load shedding schedules, to align with the rest of the country.
This decision comes after the city was placed on a reduced level of load shedding since April 2022 after devastating floods had a material impact on infrastructure.
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“While the City’s infrastructure is not yet repaired to pre-flood levels, the City acknowledges the country’s need to reduce the load to protect the national grid,” the municipality said in a statement.
“It has therefore become unavoidable for eThekwini to revert to normal load shedding stages as experienced by the rest of the country.”
“Areas with a large industrial component have been allocated to Blocks 17 to 20 and this will be shut off from stage 7 upwards for a duration of four hours at a time. This is expected to limit the impact of load shedding on production,” said the municipality.
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