No load shedding expected on election day: Eskom

Eskom chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer said load shedding is not expected during the upcoming local government elections.

He was speaking during the power utility’s state of the system briefing on Monday. His The assurances come after concerns that the country may face power cuts during this weekend’s elections following two consecutive weekends of load shedding this month. This as special votes are set to be cast on Saturday and Sunday, ahead of election day on Monday, 1 November.

Oberholzer said he expects that the power utility will have enough generation capacity.

“We are confident that the way that we manage the system at this point in time is that we make use of some of the emergency reserves during the day but we recover it at night, which assists us to reduce load shedding to a minimum. We have also had a good look at some of the opportunistic maintenance to see how we can plan that.

“Our distribution colleagues are working closely with the IEC (Electoral Commission) to make sure that electricity will be available.

“I have spoken to the generation, transmission and distribution colleagues to be on standby as from the end of this week until after the voting has taken place to make sure that wherever we do have challenges, Eskom will assist.

“We have emergency generators available, which will assist wherever we can. We are extremely committed as Eskom, to make sure that there are no electricity challenges going through the elections that are around the corner,” he said.