Eskom ‘working around the clock’ to keep the lights on
With South Africans warned to brace themselves for a ‘tough' winter, Eskom says it’s doing all it can to avoid higher stages of load shedding.
Households and businesses across the country have been forced to contend with stages 5 and 6 of load shedding this week and stretching into the weekend.
However, the power utility sent a fresh warning on Friday evening, saying its teams are doing all they can to avoid more severe loadshedding and improve the grid.
“Eskom regrets the escalation of loadshedding to Stage 6 but would like to assure all South Africans that our personnel at the various power stations are working around the clock to bring units back online and at higher efficiencies as soon as possible. It is to be noted that loadshedding is implemented as a last resort to maintain the stability of the national power system.”
The struggling power utility has attributed the dire power situation to the loss of four major generators which it says are out on extended outages.
“Units 1, 2 and 3 of Kusile Power Station are currently offline as a result of the failure of the Unit 1 flue gas duct on 22 October 2022. Work is underway to bring these units back online from November 2023. Unit 1 at Koeberg Power Station is currently on a long-term outage for maintenance and refuelling as well as the replacement of the steam generators and is expected to return to service on 6 August 2023. The unavailability of the three units at Kusile and the unit at Koeberg 1 has removed 3 080MW of capacity from the grid. This is equivalent to 3 stages of loadshedding,” the statement reads.
Add to that, the mercury dropping.
READ: Winter’s coming: More chilly nights expected, warns SAWS
Eskom adds in the statement that the anticipated cold front over parts of the country this weekend, is likely to further increase demand and pile more pressure on the existing capacity constraints.
