Grahamstown escaped the electricity cuts that crippled large parts of South Africa on Thursday 6 March as state power utility Eskom declared an emergency.
Grahamstown escaped the electricity cuts that crippled large parts of South Africa on Thursday 6 March as state power utility Eskom declared an emergency.
National load shedding started at 9am on Thursday 6 March for the first time since April 2008 and rotated in two-hour sessions across major metropolitan areas like Cape Town, Johannesburg, Pretoria and Port Elizabeth until 10pm last night.
The possibility of future load shedding in Grahamstown was raised in the Information Technology Steering Committee (ITSC) at Rhodes University on Thursday.
No Makana load shedding schedules were available from Eskom or Makana Municipality at the time of publishing.
Meanwhile, the Mail and Guardian last night reported Eskom spokesman Andrew Etzinger as saying that seven days of heavy rain had left coal stocks wet.
“We have asked our large industrial customers to reduce their consumption by 10 percent, but it appears this will not be enough,” Etzinger said.
"Rotational load shedding is a strong possibility,” he said.
Eskom appealed to the public to reduce their electricity usage to help ease the demand for power.
Algoa FM reports that the Nelson Mandela Metro Traffic Department yesterday pleaded with motorists to be extremely careful and patient at traffic lights, which were out of order due to the load-shedding power outages.
Senior Traffic Officer Lukhanyo Tinise said mid-Thursday that there had already been eight minor accidents in Port Elizabeth, which could be directly linked to the traffic lights which were out of order.
Eskom's rolling blackouts could hit sentiment towards Africa's biggest economy and drag the rand lower.
The rand edged lower against the dollar on Thursday after the blackouts started, erasing gains made the previous day.
The rand was at 10.7155 to the dollar at 06.43 GMT, down more than 0.5% from Wednesday's New York close.
Load-shedding caused misery for millions of South Africans during a severe power crunch in 2008, which cost the economy billions in lost output.
