Load shedding: No more schedule muddle-ups, promises Eskom

“Who invented load shedding?” one little girl in a movie cinema called out on Saturday 2 February when an unscheduled bout of load shedding brought an aprupt end to her viewing pleasure.

“It’s Eskom, my dear…they’re not doing their job,” said the manager on duty in a huff, adding that “this is really bad for business”. And for us, it was a case of pack up your popcorn and go home after our “50 shades of darkness by Eishkom” showing…

No way to prepare for load shedding

So yes, on top of implementing yet another bout of load shedding since Thursday 30 January, Eskom muddled up the load shedding schedules: Disruption deluxe for businesses and individuals alike.

And this is what the state-owned enterprise had to say about plunging the nation in unscheduled darkness:

“Dear customers. We are aware of issues with the Eskom load shedding schedules on the website. Our teams are currently attending to the problem. We apologise for any inconvenience. We will keep you updated.”

However, the truly embattled power utility has assured its “dear customers” on Sunday 2 February that problems with their load-shedding schedules experienced over the past few days “have been resolved overnight and customers can now access their schedules for their areas”.

Stage 2 load shedding to continue until Monday 3 February

We can only hope this is indeed the case, as Stage 2 load shedding will continue on Sunday until 6am on Monday morning 3 February, according to Eskom.

This is due to a shortage of generation capacity and depleted emergency reserves, which were used extensively to supplement capacity over the past few days, Eskom said in a statement.

Unplanned outages were at 12 080MW at 7:00 on Sunday morning. Eskom was monitoring the system closely and would continue to give periodic updates on the status of the power system, as things may change at short notice.

“We regret that load shedding has a negative impact on South Africa and we want to assure the nation that our teams are working hard to minimise the need for load shedding.

“Critical maintenance is being done to units on planned outages, as well as some of those on unplanned outages to ensure their timeous return to service. We will use the weekend to replenish dam levels for pumped storage schemes and diesel for open-cycle gas turbines. This is needed to prevent the possibility and magnitude of load shedding in the week ahead,” Eskom said.

Well, let’s just hope that the “inventors” of load shedding, who has appointed Andre Ruyter as new CEO on 6 January, can finally sort out their often-cited “critical maintenance” issues to ensure a “timeous return to service”. Their has been way too many “timeous returns” to load shedding…