Public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan has tried to assure South Africans that the elections on 1 November will not be disrupted by a lack of power.
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Eskom’s electricity supply crisis is intensifying, with the state-owned power monopoly implementing stage-4 load shedding from midday on Wednesday.
The lines are drawn for arguably the most important climate conference in history.
So far this year, Eskom has experienced 342 unit trips against a target of 196, 4.61GW of load losses against a target of 3.97GW and 23.1% unplanned load losses against a target of 18%.
The state-owned power utility said the rolling cuts will begin at 9am on Tuesday and last until at least 5am on Saturday, two days before South Africans go to the polls.
City Power, Johannesburg’s municipal electricity company, has walked back a claim it made at the weekend that it wasn’t imposing load shedding on residents.
Eskom chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer said load shedding is not expected during the upcoming local government elections.
Eskom has vowed to continue with its accelerated maintenance programme throughout the summer months.
Eskom will implement stage-2 load shedding from 9pm on Saturday until 5am on Monday, the state-owned electricity utility said on Twitter.
Eskom, which is seeking funding to move away from coal-fired power, held “fruitful discussions” with Western climate envoys recently, its CEO said.