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SA power grid 'vulnerable'
13/03/2008 20:06 - (SA)
Johannesburg - South Africa's power grid has stabilised but remains vulnerable although unplanned power blackouts have been reduced significantly, utility Eskom said on Thursday.
"The system has indeed stabilised ... but the system remains very vulnerable. Any major change can lead us to load-shedding very quickly," Eskom CEO Jacob Maroga told a news conference.
Mines in the world's top producer of platinum have been operating below full power since outages forced five days of shutdowns in late January, driving up precious metals prices and raising fears of possible job losses and slowing growth.
But Maroga said Eskom had secured 34-37 million tons of additional coal needed for the next two years, and that there had been fewer unplanned power cuts.
"There has been an improvement in the level of unplanned outages related to coal and technical problems," Maroga said.
But he said rolling blackouts, known as load-shedding in South Africa, may start from the end of the month if there were no signs that commercial and residential users had trimmed electricity usage.
Maroga said Eskom could not allow key industrial customers to bear the brunt of planned power outages. He said January's cuts in electricity to mines were necessary to avoid a blackout of the entire South African electricity network.
Eskom restricted mines to 90% of their normal power consumption following the shutdowns and is in the process of raising this to 95%.
- Reuters
- Reuters
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