Bad news about load-shedding — Eskom extends stage 2 power cuts
Eskom has announced it will continue to implement Stage 2 load-shedding until 05:00 on Saturday morning.
This comes after the state-owned power utility announced yesterday that it would have to implement load-shedding until 05:00 on Wednesday.
However, it also warned that further load-shedding might be required at short notice should there be any other significant breakdowns.
During a media briefing on Tuesday morning, Eskom chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer explained that the utility was suffering a severe capacity shortage due to numerous outages early in the week.
“Due to the unreliability and unpredictability of the generators and to prevent the need for any higher stage of load-shedding, we, unfortunately, have to inform the public that we will continue with stage 2 load-shedding until 05:00 on Saturday morning, 12 March,” Oberholzer said.
As of 9:30 on Tuesday, unplanned generation availability stood at 15,614MW, while planned unavailability was at 5,505MW, for a total of 21,119MW of unavailable capacity.
The significant shortages come after Eskom had to run 17 open-cycle gas turbines (OCGTs) over the weekend to replenish pumped-storage dam levels in anticipation for the week ahead, Oberholzer explained.
This was in the wake of a number of planned and unplanned outages over the weekend, including units at Camden, Majuba, and Kusile.
Oberholzer said the dam levels had been completely replenished by Monday morning and Eskom anticipated the return of 2,500MW of generation capacity.
4,500MW lost in one day
However, the utility only managed to bring 2,000MW back online while an additional seven generating units with a total capacity of 3,200MW tripped.
“We were relying on 16 OCGTs and we had to use the pumped storage generators to support the system,” Oberholzer said.
Eskom then announced overnight load-shedding for Monday and Tuesday, but soon had to revert to continuous load-shedding after the 500MW Medupi Unit 3 tripped.
That put the total loss as of 16:00 on Monday afternoon at 4,500MW, Oberholzer said.
“It is hard to believe, but it is true,” he stated.
“We managed to supply the peak by running all 20 OCGTs, all six emergency generator transformers, as well as implementing stage 2 load-shedding,” Oberholzer said.
Oberholzer said that Eskom had since returned four generating units to service, but took two others offline on Tuesday. The net-effect was the addition of 800MW of capacity.
Eskom anticipated the return to service of three more units on Tuesday and four other units before the weekend.
However, these gains would not be sufficient to lift load-shedding before Saturday.
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