Power utility Eskom says citizens helped prevent urgent load-shedding on Thursday by heeding its plea for power-saving measures.

Eskom alerted the nation about the possibility of power cuts due to a constrained system.

The power utility later confirmed load-shedding did not occur, saying co-operation from the public helped reduce the load on the system and prevented power cuts. 

“Soon after Eskom’s plea for the public to reduce the use of electricity during the peak hours, demand dropped to manageable levels and enabled us to avoid load-shedding.

“This, together with an extensive utilisation of emergency generation reserves, afforded Eskom the space to return to service a single generating unit at Majuba power station during the night,” Eskom said on Friday. 

On Thursday, the power utility had said the network was “under severe pressure after the loss of four generating units since this morning,” and it anticipated a high probability of power cuts between 6pm and 9pm. 

“While the system is performing relatively well, with no load-shedding implemented, a further loss of generation capacity would force Eskom to implement load-shedding at short notice to protect the integrity of the system,” Eskom said on Thursday.