By Nangamso Mabindla
19 January 2007

BUFFALO City was not spared the power outages that plagued the country on Thursday, 18 January, leading to an apology from the municipality to its customers.

The City's chief electrical engineer, Sy Gourrah, explained that the national supplier, Eskom, was experiencing unplanned outages because of technical problems at its generating plants.

"The automatic shutdown of Koeberg unit one due to a trip of the turbine has aggravated the problem. Due to [these] problems, there is a shortage of available generating capacity."

Gourrah said that to maintain the balance between demand and supply, mandatory load shedding was being implemented countrywide.

According to the Eskom website, load shedding is a controlled way of rotating the available electricity capacity between all customers. It is done when the demand is greater than what it can supply, with the objective of avoiding total blackouts.

Load shedding is implemented when there is a generation shortage, transmission constraints or localised capacity constraints.

Gourrah called on consumers to assist the national load-shedding programme by switching off non-essential electrical appliances such as air-conditioning, geysers and swimming pool pumps. Consumers were also urged to turn down their geyser settings, use their stoves wisely and not to open their fridge doors unnecessarily.

As power may be restored at any given time, consumers were also warned to treat all apparatus as being live throughout the power outages. "It is strongly recommended that all non-essential appliances be switched off or disconnected from the supply during this period in order to prevent damages when supply is restored," Gourrah said.

"Buffalo City Municipality regrets and apologies to all the affected residents for the situation. We will keep you informed on any updates received from Eskom."

Meanwhile, Eskom said that the power shortages could continue until the end of next week.

"We are doing everthing we can to minimise the inconvenience to customers. The load-shedding programme will be communicated on a regional basis and implemented in an equitable manner across the country," its statement read.

Within Buffalo City, the following load-shedding schedule will be implemented as far as possible and as required:

Mdantsane: 8am – 10am
King William's Town: 10am – 12 noon
East London suburbs, Dimbaza and Bisho: 12 noon – 2pm
Gonubie: 2pm – 4pm
Beacon Bay: 4pm – 6pm