Prepare for dark days of #loadshedding

File Picture: David Ritchie/African News Agency/ANA.

Cape Town – It could be lights out soon for Cape Town residents after Eskom implemented stage 1 load shedding as a result of industrial action.

The City of Cape Town has urged residents to prepare themselves in the event of power outages. The City’s mayoral committee member for informal settlements, water and waste services and energy, Xanthea Limberg, said that due to a spare generation capacity available at the Steenbras pumped storage scheme, residents were spared from outages so far.

“But when consumption increases during peak periods, it is likely that power will need to be conserved. Residents are advised to familiarise themselves with the schedule available on the City’s website to know when to expect their area to be without power and to prepare accordingly,” Limberg said.

Steenbras was the first hydroelectric pumped-storage scheme commissioned on the continent of Africa with an installed capacity of 180 megawatts.

“We are entirely dependent on Eskom informing us of what their generation capacity will be, so, unfortunately, we are unable to provide residents with more detailed information on what to expect. However we believe there is a risk that load shedding will continue to be implemented throughout this week,” Limberg said.

She urged residents to do everything possible to keep consumption low.

“If residents are using a lot of energy then there is not much left to spare of the Steenbras surplus. We are especially grateful for the power generated by the Steenbras pumped storage scheme as it allowed our Muslim residents to celebrate Eid without having to sit down to a cold lunch,” she said.

Limberg said that they will continue to monitor the situation and their electricity control centre remains on standby.

The wave of load shedding came as a result of acts of “intimidation and sabotage” at some of Eskom’s power stations due to industrial action by labour unions.

Meanwhile, wage negotiations between the power utility giant and labour unions the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, National Union of Mineworkers and Solidarity reached a deadlock after unions demanded a wage increase of between 9% and 15%. Eskom, however, is offering no increase.

Eskom said that as a result of the industrial action its prognosis indicates that the power system will take up to 10 days to recover once all staff return to work today.

“While safety of employees remains our first priority, recovery teams at our power stations continue to work hard to stabilise the power system and to return our generation plant as quickly as possible,” Eskom said.

Eskom said that level 1 load shedding requires 1000MW to be load-shed nationwide.

Load shedding is conducted as a measure of last resort to protect the power system from a total collapse or blackout.

President of the Cape Chambers Janine Myburgh said that load shedding could have a crippling effect on the economy.

She said the dismal state of state-owned enterprises is unfair to the citizens of South Africa, “and who suffers? Once again it is the poor and marginalised. When it comes to the union negotiations that have deadlocked, frankly we find the situation untenable”.

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