- Courtesy of the diesel supplied by PetroSA this week, Eskom is able to reduce loadshedding during the night to Stage 3 (from Stage 4) at 16:00 – 05:00 until Monday morning.
- Daytime loadshedding will be maintained at Stage 2 during 05:00 – 16:00 daily until further notice.
Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan told MPs during Wednesday’s parliament Q&A session with economic cluster ministers that 50 million litres of diesel will be provided by PetroSA to Eskom. This latest reactive move comes at a time when Eskom loadshedding has intensified and become more erratic. Read more
The continued implementation of loadshedding is mainly due to the high levels of breakdowns and the limited emergency generation reserves. Since Wednesday afternoon a generating unit each at Grootvlei, Kendal and Tutuka power stations were taken offline for repairs. Four units at Camden Power Station have also been taken offline to repair a water leak on a line that supplies auxiliary cooling water.
A generating unit at Hendrina Power Station was returned to service.
Three units at Kusile Power Station are offline due to the duct (chimney structure) failure late in October and will remain offline for a few months while repairs to the chimney system take place. Unit 1 of Koeberg Nuclear Power Station will continue to generate at a reduced output over the next three weeks as the fuel is ramped down ahead of the refuelling and maintenance outage scheduled to commence during December 2022.
Eskom currently has 6000MW on planned maintenance, while another 14160MW of capacity is unavailable due to breakdowns.
Author: Bryan Groenendaal
