Eskom urges South Africans to reduce power consumption during winter

Eskom has called on residents to reduce their electricity consumption this winter, as the utility battles to meet demand.

Acting CEO Calib Cassim said that despite all efforts to restore supply, generation capacity was 3,000 megawatts less than this time last year.

Giving an update on the electricity grid on Thursday, Cassim said the power utility had fallen short in its generation capacity targets that were supposed to be met by the end of March this year.

With Kusile units one, two, and three down, and Koeberg unit one offline, Eskom said they were in a tight position.

Cassim said that the focus this winter was around the performance of the existing generation fleet.

The power utility said it had launched various load management programmes to incentivise customers to reduce their load on the grid.

Eskom’s distribution group executive, Monde Bala, said that residents had a bigger role to play in alleviating electricity demand.

“We incentivise residential customers to manage specifically on the geyser consumption, specifically to shift load to be more energy efficient, this is by utilizing appliances that utilize less electricity.”

He said that to lighten pressure on the grid, they were focusing on mainly reducing commercial and household consumption.

-EWN

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