The eThekwini Municipality has declared that load shedding would resume on August 1st.
Residents in the eThekwini Municipality were reportedly excused from rolling blackouts after the massive rains in April wrecked water and electricity infrastructure among other things. However, other areas are still experiencing ongoing power outages.
The Municipality claimed that while the nation works to prevent a total blackout, it has become vital for eThekwini to start contributing to load shedding, which is why it has been reinstated.
According to reports, EThekwini and Eskom are actively working to reduce any potential threats to the city’s electrical grid in the wake of major flood damage to electrical infrastructure.
The preexisting load shedding schedules had to be changed because several network components still need to be reconfigured and certain substations are still not operational.
For stages four and higher, the eThekwini Municipality has created a provisional schedule.
The programme is in effect until further notice.
According to reports, certain places won’t experience load shedding because their networks have been seriously damaged.
“Customers are recommended to lighten their load, particularly during peak hours.
To avoid overloading when power returns, all high-consumption equipment, including geysers, stoves, and heaters, must be turned off during power outages.
Municipality of eThekwini
Since the April floods, electrical load
According to research, the municipality lost 50% (between 700MW and 800MW) of the electrical load on their electrical infrastructure after the tragedy, Eskom and eThekwini announced earlier in July.
Up till now, a sizable chunk of this load has not been brought back up and won’t be until significant repairs are made.
“Importantly, there is agreement that the integrity of the electrical infrastructure was severely compromised, and if portions of the infrastructure and loads were to trip either through manual intervention (load shedding) or an electrical fault, it is possible and likely that the Municipality grid could be even more damaged, prolonging the outage even further,” according to the report.