- South Africa’s state owned energy utility will continue with stage 2 load-shedding this coming week explaining that the return to service of some generation units has been delayed.
It’s not all bad news. The return to service of two generation units at Kusile power station that were not available last week has been delayed due to difficulties in restarting the units, which are now expected to return to service starting tomorrow. In addition, over the past 24 hours Eskom teams have successfully returned a generation unit each at the Kriel, Grootvlei and Duvha power stations to service.
Despite Eskom’s stringent measures to manage the impact of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic on the operations, the Medupi power station has 48 positive cases out of a pool of 75 contractors. This has negatively affected the utilities ability to executive work as planned.
Related news: Coal conveyor belt breakdown at Kusile triggers load-shedding in South Africa
Eskom currently has 6 384MW on planned maintenance, while another 13 181MW of capacity is unavailable due to unplanned maintenance, breakdowns and the outage delays mentioned above. The challenged utility assures that their personnel are working hard to return as much of this capacity to service as soon as possible.
Author: Bryan Groenendaal
