South Africans might soon face mandatory power cuts if Eskom is able to convince government to introduce its Energy Conservation Scheme (ECS) that would force domestic and commercial consumers to cut consumption by at least 10 percent.
Eskom has a voluntary ECS in place for 500 of its largest consumers and 134 companies are participating and have already managed to save 5 percent of the baseline amount of electricity used.
Brian Dames, Eskom chief executive officer says that while the utility would like to have a voluntary electricity saving programme in place, with residents participating freely, it may be necessary to introduce a mandatory scheme to prevent load-shedding.
Eskom’s implementation of the energy efficiency campaign and its standard winter tariffs – which are 2.5-times higher than the summer tariffs – has helped to reduce demand from large power users. He says that similar tariffs may be applied to domestic users.
Overall demand for electricity was below forecasts this year – despite the bitterly cold weather – and peak demand reached 37 064 MW at the end of May. Eskom expected this figure to rise to 37 500 MW by July but peak demand was actually 1.5 percent lower than the same period last year.
He says that Eskom managed to secure about 600 MW of power from independent power producers during the winter period. It has also finalised a medium-term power purchase agreement with Sappi, Ipsa, Tangent and TSB Sugar to provide an additional 376 MW of power for the national grid.
Eskom is about to embark on its summer maintenance programme when electricity demand is generally lower and this will place additional stresses on the provision of electricity until the Medupi power station starts to generate power in 2012.
The maintenance of the power stations does mean that there is an elevated risk of power failures as there is less electricity being generated while the plants are shut down for routine work.
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