News Flash
- South Africa’s state owned power utility, Eskom, has announced that that it had to urgently implement Stage 6 load in the early hours of this morning.
- Yesterday the beleaguered utiltiy announced that the breakdown of five generating units overnight and this morning, with a combined capacity of 2 400MW, has necessitated the escalation of loadshedding to Stage 5.
- This morning they announced that a further two generation units had tripped at Kusile (800MW) and Kriel (500MW) power stations.
- Under Stage 6 load shedding, 6 000MW needs to be shed from the country’s electricity system, leaving many without electricity for as much as eight hours a day.
Eskom currently has 7 210MW on planned maintenance, while another 17897MW of capacity is unavailable due to breakdowns. Eskom has a total capacity of 44000MW.
While some generation units are anticipated to return to service, it is necessary to escalate the loadshedding to stop the use of the emergency generation reserves and begin the replenishment thereof ahead of the week. The emergency generation reserves have been depleted by extensive utilisation to limit the amount of loadshedding over the past two weeks.
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“Eskom apologises for the continued and unfortunate loadshedding, which is implemented as a last resort in view of the shortage of generation capacity and the need to attend to breakdowns and carry out planned maintenance to return units to service,” the utility said in a statement.
Eskom has made contingency plans for load shedding up to Stage 8 should it become necessary in order to prevent a national blackout which is when the entire grid is taken down.
Eskom provided an update on current system challenges at a virtual media briefing yesterday, 18 September 2022 at 10:00. Link to the recording: https://we.tl/t-y7k8qw5kCs
Author: Bryan Groenendaal
1 Comment
In February 2005 the famous bolt in the turbine at Koeberg ps. It was raining as I travelled to CPT through the many unlit traffic lghts on the M7.
17 years later the position is even worse.
The government is entirely responsible for the current farce.
Once again they talk the talk and do nothing