Trying to navigate daily life through the nightmarish consequences of stage 6 load-shedding is unsettling enough.
But being confronted by figures at the weekend revealing that our energy crisis effectively reached stage 8 — when an ailing Eskom shed 7,072MW, according to its own official daily energy generation update — was yet another unwelcome shock to an already fed-up citizenry.
Eskom denied this with an explanation that is likely to have left many people befuddled, but it boiled down to curtailing 1,353MW from those customers on “load curtailment” and reducing 5,719MW from all other customers — adding up to 7,072MW.
Asked by the Sunday Times if that did not equate to stage 8 power cuts, the power utility explained it this way: “Load that was reduced, which is the correct terminology, is indeed more than 6,000MW. We refrain from using the terminology because the public becomes confused and thinks we are talking about load reduction that we normally implement when not load-shedding to prevent failing of equipment due to overload.”
Stage 8 requires 7,001 to 8,000MW of power being cut — to explain it another way.
Nevertheless, the reason we knew how bad things were — before winter when energy demand increases, and the rolling blackouts may well intensify — is because Eskom publishes a daily “evening peak” report breaking down how much power it has available, what the actual demand is, and the total number of megawatts being load-shed.
It was this information that revealed what happened last week, which those who follow the numbers closely read with a sense of foreboding.
The figures for Saturday, Sunday and Monday were not published as usual on Twitter — as far as one can ascertain — which resulted in an information vacuum, though energy demand tends to drop over weekends.
South Africa’s embattled power utility should be commended for being transparent and sharing these numbers. In times of crisis, and there is no doubt this is a severe crisis battering productivity and investor confidence, such a vacuum only fuels gossip, speculation and confusion.
Samsung faced a backlash for withholding information about the extent of a mobile phone model’s battery problem several years ago and sustained a heavy blow to its reputation at the time.
Please do keep sharing the numbers, Eskom. Bad things happen in the dark.
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