Power utility Eskom has urged South African motorist to heed safety rules as the group will make use of the low-electricity demand during the festive season to intensify plant maintenance and fast-track the recovery of coal stock levels.
Eskom said on Wednesday that this would result in a higher-than-usual number of coal trucks, especially on the major roads to and from the coal-fired power stations and coal mines, mostly situated in Mpumalanga.
Coal haulage will stop during high-peak days where the volume of travellers increases on the roads from December 24 to 27 and again from December 31 to January 1.
The utility is scrambling to beef up its coal stocks, after ten of its 15 power stations in November had less than the 20-day minimum prescribed in South Africa’s grid code. Five of those stations had less than ten-days of stock.
Unplanned outages and breakdowns at several units resulted in a sustained period of load-shedding in early December and warnings that the risks of rotational power cuts will remain in place until at least the end of March.
Eskom is implementing a nine-point system recovery plan to improve generation performance and return the energy availability factor to 75% by November 2019.