Eskom warns of load shedding throughout winter months

Oberholzer, Eskom CEO André de Ruyter and members of the Eskom management team provided an update on the country’s power grid on Wednesday morning amid the latest round of rolling blackouts.

The utility implemented stage 2 load shedding on Tuesday after a generation unit each at Lethabo, Tutuka, Ingula, Drakensberg, and Arnot, as well as two units each at Hendrina and Matla power stations suffered breakdowns.

Despite the implementation of load shedding, Oberholzer said the utility is still making extensive use of its emergency reserves.

“Unfortunately, due to the depleted capacity from generator breakdowns and delays in 2000MW of generation to return to service, combined with a higher demand for electricity as the cold weather set in, there was unfortunately insufficient capacity to supply the country’s demand. The implementation of stage 2 load shedding was necessary to make sure that the national grid remains balanced.

“Despite the implementation of stage 2 load shedding, we are still using the extensive emergency reserve to go through the morning and the evening peak. Unfortunately, we still see that we will continue with stage 2 load shedding until Monday morning,” says Oberholzer.

Oberholzer also warned that the risk of load shedding will remain throughout the winter months.

“We need to understand that we do not have enough capacity as a country, this is what we all need to understand. We have a system that is old and has not been maintained the way it was supposed to. We have a system that has been running in the red for 15 years. We now need to take these units down for planned maintenance and unfortunately, we don’t have the luxury, because of the country’s demands,” adds Oberholzer.

“It makes it extremely difficult to do the planned maintenance that we need to because of the demand. So given this, we are trying our best to match capacity to demand, but we have an unreliable and unpredictable system.”

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