By Rachel Mohamed
It seems like load shedding is a thing of the past as the lights remain on in the country. However, this comes at a heavy cost to consumers, raising questions about how the state-owned enterprise has fulfilled its duty.
A recent amaBhungane report has shown that Eskom has accomplished this due to lower demand and increasing coal supply.
Speaking on the News Beat show on Tuesday, Susan Comrie an Investigating Journalist from the amaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism said analyzing the data behind Eskom’s turnaround strategy seemed too good to be true.
She further stated that many theories were being thrown around about how Eskom managed load reduction.
“From what we can tell Eskom’s story does seem to check out and the coal fleet is performing better. But other factors come into play for instance demand is lower and we have fewer people drawing power from the grid and that is a big factor on why we managed to stay off load shedding over winter,” said Comrie.
“How we look at the data is that the demand changes over the day and when compared to the previous years. What you see is that the demand is lower, particularly during the middle of the day, and reduced in peak times,” concluded Comrie.
Saffas have been free from power cuts for several months.
Listen for the full interview:
VOC News
Photo: Vocfm
