The risk of power cuts is currently low as many industries are still on holiday, Eskom said on Monday.

“The power system is expected to remain constrained but stable this week and for the rest of the festive season. The risk of load shedding is low during this period,” Eskom said.

“However, the system remains vulnerable, meaning that any extra load or faults in the system may necessitate the need to implement load shedding.”

Eskom said electricity demand was expected to remain low for the rest of the festive season.

“Eskom will use this period of low electricity demand to reduce the backlog on its plant maintenance programme.”

Eskom urged South Africans to use electricity sparingly.

Capacity available to meet Monday evening’s peak demand was 30,094MW (including open cycle gas turbines) while demand was forecast at 26,291MW.

Eskom said current planned maintenance stood at 5771MW and unplanned outages 8029MW.

On Tuesday and Wednesday the capacity would exceed demand.

“The demand in electricity generally tends to decrease on Fridays, going into the weekend as well as on public holidays,” said Eskom.

The capacity available from Thursday through to Sunday was expected to meet expected demand.

The utility called on people to reduce power use by 10 percent during the day to help it conduct planned maintenance.

In recent weeks, Eskom has battled to keep the lights on, and with maintenance issues.

On December 5, Eskom implemented stage three blackouts.

Stage one allows for up to 1000MW of the national load to be shed, stage two for up to 2000MW, and stage three for up to 4000MW.

On December 8, Eskom CEO Tshediso Matona denied that the state utility was in a crisis. SAPA