'Eskom will do its best to keep lights on in Winter'
Eskom says it stands by its CEO's comments that an increase of 9.4% in tariffs could lead to the return of load shedding especially during the winter months.
Brian Molefe says not being granted the full 16% increase they'd asked for would affect operations.
The National Energy Regulator, NERSA approved a 9.4% electricity hike for 2016-2017 last month.
This after Eskom submitted an application to recover R22.8-billion.
The utility's Khulu Phasiwe says Eskom will do its best to keep the lights on - they've had a clean record for more than 200 days.
"We are doing a lot of maintenance and we have not had load shedding because of that. In other words, we're improving the performance of our coal fired power stations and as a result, we are using less and less diesel.
"Basically, our system is looking so good that we are relatively confident that we will not have load shedding even at the height of Winter this year," he said.
(File photo: Gallo Images)