Faizel Patel – 02/09/2020
With freezing temperatures and rain expected over many parts of Gauteng, the council of Scientific and Industrial Research says South Africa is experiencing more load shedding this year than last year.
Residents can expect to brace themselves and make plans to keep warm, as Eskom has announced that they are again enforcing loadshedding.
Stage two blackouts will kick in from 8 o clock and will last until 10pm tonight.
Speaking to Radio Islam, the CSIR’s Joanne Calitz says the load shedding has increased dramatically from last year.
“Indeed, so when had a look at the loadshedding this year so far up to today versus the previous year, it looks like we’ve had 15% more loadshedding than the previous year in terms of energy shed.”
Calitz says while Eskom has been transparent about the power crisis, load shedding is here to stay, at least for a while.
“For the rest of this year, unfortunately and typically in the summer months, there availability of the coal feeds gets lower, they have four units out on maintenance and the heat causes issues with unplanned breakdowns. So I do expect that loadshedding will continue until the end of the year at least and possibility thereafter as well if we don’t have any interventions in place.”
Calitz says the coming online of the Medupe and Kusile power stations which are still under construction will be in the best interests of the country to alleviate the pressure on the power grid.
Listen to the interview with Joanne Calitz
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