Power rationing until July
Power rationing would impact Eskom's industrial, commercial and residential customers. Eskom said it would look at enforcing immediate power rationing to improve system security and enable initial recovery of power feeding the national grid.
The move is part of the utility's National System Stabilisation Plan, which makes up the second of Eskom's three-phase plan to get South Africa's power supplies back on track after months of power outages.
Phase one of the three-pronged plan involves recovery of system security, which Eskom anticipates will take up to four weeks.
Eskom urgently needs demand to be reduced by 4 000MW if it is to stabilise power supply.
The utility said the four weeks would be characterized by load shedding, and while it hoped this phase would last only up to four weeks, this could be extended if coal supplies to its power stations were compromised in any way.
Customers have no choice over outages
The second phase will be followed by the National System Stabilisation Plan, which will kick in at the end of February or beginning of March this year.
During this phase all electricity customers are expected to reduce consumption by at least 10% to free up at least 3 000MW of power beyond the initial four-week period until 2010.
Eskom indicated if it could not get customers to reduce their demand, it would have to switch to pre-emptive load curtailment, where it would take out blocks of power for certain periods of time.
Customers would be informed of Eskom's plans, but have no choice over the outages.
Eskom expected pre-emptive load curtailment to improve predictability.
The stabilisation phase is seen as a way to get Eskom and its customers through the transition period between system security recovery and its power conservation programme, which will be applied for at least four years running up to 2012.
Power conservation, the final phase of Eskom's recovery plan, would see the introduction of a quota system that would be supported by either incentives or penalties for meeting or exceeding power use.
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