Eskom has announced that it will apply various levels of load shedding throughout the weekend due to its nearly depleted emergency generation reserves.
By Thursday morning, Eskom said that it had lost at least 16,585 MW of capacity owing to breakdowns and another 5,683 MW due to maintenance.
“Stage 3 load shedding is in effect until Thursday at 4 p.m. After that, it will climb to Stage 4 until Friday at 5 a.m. On Friday, load shedding will be reduced to Stage 2 from 5 a.m. to 4 p.m. It is anticipated that load shedding stages 2 and 1 would be implemented during the weekend.
“Load shedding is only enforced as a last resort due to the lack of generation capacity and the necessity to address breakdowns,” Eskom said in a statement.
Despite putting several generation units back online, the company stated it still has generation capacity issues, forcing the continuation of power outages.
“Both the diesel and pumped storage dam levels are practically gone, as are the emergency generation reserves. These factors, along with the persistently high rate of generating unit breakdowns, are among the primary causes of the ongoing generation capacity shortfalls.
Since Tuesday evening, Eskom personnel have returned one producing unit to service at each of the Duvha, Kendal, and Medupi power plants, according to Eskom.