Brace yourselves for more rolling blackouts until the weekend, Eskom says

Brace yourselves for more rolling blackouts until the weekend, Eskom says

Power utility Eskom is set to continue with blackouts between stages 3 and 4 until the end of the week.

Eskom reduced its rolling blackouts to stage 3 yesterday morning but ramped it up to stage 4 at 4pm.

The power utility said it had managed to replenish emergency reserves over the past weekend to levels it was comfortable with at some of its power stations, enabling it to move load shedding to lower stages.

The Minister in the Presidency responsible for Electricity, Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said that units at Matla, Arnot, Tutuka and Kriel power stations had returned to service.

“We have replenished our emergency reserves and some of these units have come back. And of course, what has also retained was Kriel unit number three,” said Ramokgopa.

On Friday, Eskom increased load shedding to stage 6, leaving South Africans angry amid a severe heatwave in many parts of the country

People took to social media platform X, to voice out their frustration.

Ntombifuthi Nyathi wrote: “In this heat wave then you get to work there’s no water and electricity.”

On Sunday, Ramokgopa provided an update on electricity generation performance following the implementation of stage 6 load shedding on Friday.

This festive season, as companies close for the holidays, the power utility hopes to use the period for planned maintenance.

Eric Shunmagum, Eskom’s senior manager in the group executive generation office, said from yesterday (Monday) onwards until Friday, they planned to switch between stages 3 during the day, and stage 4 in the evening

“As we move into Saturday, December, 02 2023, we will get some reprieve and we are planning for no load shedding during the day from Saturday and Sunday, and we will do stage 2 in the evenings. Once again this is to help in terms of building up the reserves,” said Shunmagum.

Meanwhile, the power utility said on Friday credit rating agency S&P Global Ratings (“S&P Global”) announced its decision to upgrade Eskom’s long-term issuer credit rating to ‘B’ from ‘CCC+’ with a stable outlook on the group’s senior secured and senior unsecured debt.

In addition, S&P Global also upgraded Eskom’s South Africa national scale rating to ‘zaBBB/zaA-2’ from ‘zaB/zaB’.

In their rationale, the credit rating agency stated that the upgrade is due to their expectation that the South African government’s R254 billion financial support package, as part of the Eskom Debt Relief Act signed into law on July 7, will cover Eskom’s debt servicing and repayment obligations over the current and coming two financial years, and resulting in an improvement of the company’s credit quality.

The stable outlook reflects S&P Global’s view that Eskom’s creditworthiness will continue to benefit from explicit and timely support from the South African government, facilitating a strengthening of Eskom’s liquidity position and less risk of default as the debt relief agreement is implemented as stipulated.

“Eskom welcomes the decision to upgrade the company’s credit rating by S&P Global. We continue to work with key stakeholders, particularly shareholder ministries as we implement our turnaround plan with a focus on key strategic objectives which include operations and financial recovery; people, culture and ethics, and legal separation of the business,” said Eskom’s Acting Group Chief Executive, Calib Cassim.

He said the debt-relief package extended to Eskom by National Treasury is being used to cover debt service requirements and was enacted on condition that Eskom does not incur any further indebtedness over the next three years without explicit approval of the Minister of Finance.

The Star

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