Eksom worried about South Arica’s power supply

Eskom, the South African power utility, is concerned about meeting peak power demand due to the southern hemisphere winter sets in, despite that the situation should get better by the middle of June according to chief executive Brian Dames.

Eksom declared on Monday that spare supply on its electricity network decreased to 2 percent of total potential output as temperatures fell.

The tight supply is partly due to maintenance, which should improve as some units, including one at the Koeberg nuclear plant close to Cape Town, come back online by the middle of June.

Dames declared that, “it is a big concern for us to meet that peak demand while we have plants on outage.”

“Towards the middle of June we should see a return of our Koeberg unit and the rest of the other units. From then our maintenance will reduce,” Dames said.

Eskom is responsible for keeping power flowing to mines, factories and smelters, which four years ago had to shut down for days, causing a loss of billions of dollars and an increase in the price of metals including platinum and gold, which South Africa is an important producer of.

Reuters.