Load shedding? What load shedding?

KNYSNA NEWS - That was the general shocked reaction among residents of the Garden Route, the whole country for that matter, when the surprising news that load shedding had been implemented by Eskom on Sunday 18 November hit the headlines that afternoon.

Even the Knysna Municipality said on Sunday, once load shedding had already commenced, that “Should they (Eskom) have informed us timeously through the proper channels, we most certainly [would] have informed all Knysna residents accordingly.”

The state-owned utility provider implemented stage 1 load shedding from 12:15 on Sunday, which was supposed to last until 22:00, but according to a statement released later that day load shedding was cancelled as from 19:00, “as we made sufficient progress with regard to the emergency reserves,” the press release read.

Arnold Segawa of Moneyweb wrote on Monday 19 November that during a state-of-the-system briefing on Friday 16 November, Eskom warned that load shedding cannot be ruled out this December, thanks to dwindling coal stockpiles.

“It is crucial that I inform you that load shedding cannot be ruled out for the remaining part of the year and we request South Africans to use electricity sparsely especially during the peak times,” said Eskom CEO Phakamani Hadebe during the briefing, according to Segawa, adding that the utility will implement 59 planned outages between September 2018 and December 2019 “to address partial load losses and maintain critical plant systems”, according to Hadebe.

Countless fruitless calls to the Eskom “media desk” on Monday, by this publication, yielded no further clarity on future planned load shedding, or whether there was any load shedding to come.

According to the Eskom load shedding web page, it is currently “not load shedding”, although there is a load shedding schedule available, which readers can find below, planned out until Monday 17 Dec. (visit http://loadshedding.eskom.co.za for available schedules)

Knysna and Plettenberg Bay: