Eskom still urging customers to save 10%

By Celeste Ganga
04 April 2008

In order to balance, stabilise and improve the situation in the electricity supply industry at the moment, Eskom says it needs to do additional maintenance on its generation plant and it needs to build up its stock pile levels.

“In order to do this, we need the demand for electricity to drop by 10%, so that we can take generators out of service and do maintenance on them, “says Manager of Demand Side Management, Andrew Etzinger.

He adds that if any large customer or municipality comes forward with a 10% saving, the utility would take that customer or municipality off the load shedding schedule.

“Our advice to the public would be to really help the municipality that they find themselves in or if they are a direct large customer connected to Eskom, to really save as much electricity as possible. But also encourage others in their community to save electricity,” says Etzinger.

He says that if the 10% saving does come through, then load shedding would be a thing of the past. The current pre-emptive load shedding is set to take place until June.