Cape Town - Power utility Eskom has revealed it has already spent R626 million on diesel so far for this month.
This is around 48.5 million litres, Eskom chief executive officer Andre de Ruyter said.
This comes as Eskom was briefing the media on the system’s current challenges on Thursday.
Eskom’s chief financial officer, Caleb Cassim, said the power utility has spent under R7 billion in the last financial year (April 1, 2021 until March 31, 2022) on its own diesel.
On Wednesday, the power utility announced it was downgrading its load shedding from Stage 4 to Stage 3, and by Friday, South Africans can expect load shedding to be suspended.
“We intend to drop to Stage 2 after the evening peak. After the peak on Friday evening, we can lift [load shedding] for the weekend,” he said.
Questioned on load shedding for the upcoming week, De Ruyter was hopeful there would be none, however, he said load shedding cannot be anticipated.
“Prognosis is that we don’t anticipate load shedding for next week, but it is dependent on the stability of the system. It depends on how we perform on the weekend, and the rain on the weekend – we may see further impact and it may impact generational capacity.
“Monday is tight. After that we’ll know. We don't plan for load shedding next week, but there'’s always a risk,” De Ruyter said.
Eskom’s head of generation, Rhulani Mathebula, said the power utility has 79 coal units of which 18 “are forced off” due to breakdowns and eight are on planned maintenance.
South Africans were thanked for their perseverance during this time and urged to continue to save electricity.