Eskom to reduce load-shedding
Eskom will reduce load-shedding to stage 5 from Tuesday after restoring several generating units at its coal-fired power stations to service over Sunday night.
“We returned a unit each at Camden, Kriel, Kusile and Kendal,” the utility said in a short statement to the media on Monday afternoon.
However, it also had to take one unit at Duvha Power Station off the grid due to a boiler tube leak.
“This means we will be able to reduce load-shedding to stage 5 at midnight,” Eskom said.
At the time of publication, planned outages were at 5,411MW and breakdowns amounted to 16,326MW.
Notably, the latter was higher than on Sunday, when Eskom was forced to implement stage 6 load-shedding.
Eskom said that further updates on load-shedding would be announced “as soon as possible”.
No firm outlook
In a media briefing on Sunday, the utility’s COO Jan Oberholzer said the state of the system made it difficult to provide a firm outlook on the load-shedding stages that would be required in the coming week.
Aside from numerous unit breakdowns last week, Eskom had made extensive use of its emergency generating capacity, including pumped-storage dams and open-cycle gas turbines, to get the country through peak demand periods.
As a result, the water levels and diesel reserves at these facilities had run low.
Oberholzer said Eskom anticipated it could return the water levels to an adequate capacity by Monday evening, but diesel volumes were only expected to be recovered later in the week.
Because it cannot continue relying heavily on the roughly 6,000MW of capacity that these systems provide, a high level of load-shedding continues to be required.
Meanwhile, the load-shedding situation cut short President Cyril Ramaphosa’s latest overseas trip, following a virtual meeting with his cabinet ministers and officials.
Ramaphosa will fly back to South Africa to “deal” with the power crisis after attending Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral on Monday, cancelling plans to address the United Nations General Assembly in New York later in the week.
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