Power utility Eskom CEO André de Ruyter told parliamentarians on Wednesday that the latest instalment of Stage 2 load shedding starting on Wednesday until Saturday was regrettable.
“A number of members have commented on Stage 2 load shedding. This is of course very regrettable, and again from Eskom’s perspective we would like to apologise for implementing Stage 2 load shedding,” De Ruyter said.
He made the statement when responding to questions on when the entity would be presenting its annual audit and audit report to the public enterprises portfolio committee.
De Ruyter joined the meeting later after first holding a media briefing on the planned load shedding.
He told MPs that load shedding was a deliberate intervention by the systems operators to curtail demand on equity and rotational basis to ensure total system blackout was avoided. The CEO also said the terminology could strike out as semantic, but it was a different phenomenon.
MPs had raised concerns around communication by Eskom to advise the public when load shedding was to be implemented.
In recent times, the entity has been notifying the public at short notice and it had been worse in the period leading to the local government elections on November 1. We anticipate that the lifting of the licensing restriction from one to 1 000 megawatts will enable more capacity to be brought to the grid sooner rather than later,” he said.
De Ruyter noted that the explosion at Medupi last year had played a significant role in the current load shedding with loss of 720MW that would take 18 to 24 months to recover.
He said they had received a preliminary investigation into the explosion and were in the process of identifying whether there was negligence or malicious intent. If there was, we need to bring individuals to book for their actions or inactions,” De Ruyter said.
Source: News365
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