Feature: This winter, many S. Africans shiver due to power cuts

Many South Africans are feeling the bite of a cold season after Eskom broke its promise to avoid power cuts, or load shedding as formally called by the national electricity utility, during the winter.

The past three days has seen continued load shedding, which not only plunged many parts of the country into darkness but also deprived many South Africans of space heating.

This came as a cold front is gripping the country, making a lot of South Africans shiver without heating.

On Wednesday, Eskom made an urgent appeal to customers, urging them to help minimize the risk of load shedding by saving electricity.

"If everyone were to switch off energy intensive appliances such as electric geysers and pool pumps during high electricity usage times between 17:00 and 21:00, this could save up to 2,940 MW, and avoid the implementation of load shedding," Eskom said.

This is enough to free up five units of a six-pack power station and power three cities the size of Durban, Port Elizabeth and Bloemfontein, the utility said.

Eskom, which provides more than 95 percent of the country's electricity, says it implements load shedding to avoid the total collapse of the national grid.

The utility has been under fire for poor management that leads to load shedding which has become more and more common these days.

Many South Africans expressed their disappointment that Eskom has broken its promise to avoid load shedding during the winter.

Naomi Shaun, a shop assistant in Cape Town, told Xinhua that she caught a cold because she could not use the heater due to load shedding. "In the past, we kept ourselves warm with space heating. But now we have to go to bed, shivering," she said.

"It looks as if Eskom is making fun of customers. Its promise is nonsense," Shaun added.

Last month, Eskom spokesperson Khulu Phasiwe led South Africans to believe that they need not fear load shedding in winter.

"Eskom's long-term plan was to reduce planned outages. Because of machines expected to come back on-line, Eskom, therefore, thinks it will be able to meet the winter demand," he said.

"Winter in many households actually starts after April, with some people starting to use heaters as we speak, but officially (it starts) from 1 June," he added.

Earlier this year, former Eskom CEO Tshediso Matona also confidently told Parliament that Eskom would keep the lights on during winter, as "it now has enough money in its budget to buy diesel and keep its generators on-line, thus avoiding load- shedding over the next few months."

However this seems to no longer be the case. This week Eskom once again implemented load shedding, citing shortages of generation capacity as a result of technical faults at some units.

On Wednesday afternoon, Eskom began load shedding again in stage two in some areas due to high demand or urgent maintenance being performed at certain power stations.

The utility has three stages for load shedding. Stage one allows for up to 1000MW of the national load to be shed once a day. If the pressure grows, stage two for up to 2000MW or stage three for up to 4000MW would be shed. At stage two, power goes off twice a day, while at stage three, electricity could be cut two or three times a day.

Eskom says load shedding is necessary to ensure that maintenance is carried out and that load shedding could be implemented at short notice.

"South African people should not be expected to accept this flip-flopping by Eskom," the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) said, adding that South Africans have been fed up with Eskom's "maintenance upgrades" and "constrained power systems".

"Despite the promises of a winter free of load shedding, very little has changed. It is unacceptable that many South Africans in rural villages have been left out in the cold with load-shedding delays of more than 10 hours per day," said Natasha Mazzone, DA Shadow Minister of Public Enterprises.

Mazzone said she will write to Minister of Public Enterprises, Lynne Brown, requesting that she appear before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Public Enterprises to explain why Eskom has failed to uphold its promise of keeping the lights on during winter as the lights have gone off in many towns and cities in the country in the past week.

Mazzone will also request that Brown approach Eskom to table a mitigation plan before the Portfolio Committee on Public Enterprises in order to address load-shedding during maintenance upgrades this winter season. Endi