South Africa’s national power utility, Eskom, has announced it will be implementing local reduction in heavily populated areas in two key Free State districts for three hours on Tuesday.
Some residents in the mining rich Lejweleputswa district municipality, which includes Welkom and Odendaalsrus, as well as those in the province’s tourist hub of the Thabo Mofutsanyana district municipality, will be left in the dark between 17:00 and 20:00 on Tuesday evening.
The specific affected areas include: Thabong Township outside Welkom, and Mamafubedu Township in Petrus Steyn.
The utility says the load reduction implementation is meant to protect its infrastructure in high density areas that are prone to network overloadin,g often exacerbated by illegal connections.
Previously Eskom national spokesperson, Sikhonathi Mantshantsha, said on social media that when transformers are overloaded they are at risk of exploding, leaving a wider area without electricity until the transformer is replaced.
The replacement of a single transformer is also a costly exercise to the financially burdened utility, costing the utility between R 50 000 and R 100 000 to replace said Mantshantsha previously.
The issue of load reduction returned to national attention when the utility effected power outages in the country’s biggest township, Soweto in mid-2021.
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