Eskom has considered instituting permanent load shedding, but has decided against it for now.
On Sunday, Eskom chief executive officer André de Ruyter said the utility had considered continuous load shedding and to "normalise" it at Stage 2, instead of introducing it when the power system faces a crunch.
This would give Eskom more scope to plan for maintenance.
However, the utility found that nonstop load shedding at low levels wouldn’t add "significant additional" headroom for doing maintenance, and decided not to opt for it.
"We have debated [permanent load shedding] extensively internally. In a certain way, the planned maintenance we carry out contributes to load shedding because it is capacity that we plan to take off the grid," De Ruyter said. In the end, however, Eskom decided against it, he said.
Following a disastrous week of large-scale breakdowns at coal-fired power stations, Eskom now expects that it will have to increase load shedding above planned levels over the summer months, De Ruyter confirmed.
On Sunday, Stage 6 load shedding hit South Africa. Monday will also see Stage 6 with and "high levels" of load shedding expected for the week, Eskom warned.
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