In the age of social media, it is very easy to ramp up a frenzy off the back of misinformation, and in the case of recent woes faced by state-owned power utility, stage 10 loadshedding has been touted as the worst that’s yet to come.
Is stage 10 loadshedding a reality?
Earlier this week, Eskom sent shockwaves of frustration across the internet when, in a statement, the electricity provider, announced the return of stage 2 loadshedding.
To make matters worse, the power utility returned a day later to note the increase of rotational power outages to stage 4, revealing, in its emergency media briefing, ongoing battles with maintaining stability at its coal power plants.
More than anything, Eskom revealed stage 4 loadshedding was necessary to prevent an energy crisis. With the frailties of South Africa’s coal power generation limiting energy capacity, the state-owned electricity provider has relied heavily on emergency reserves that, according to News24, costs the state parastatal billions to burn 9 million litres of diesel a day, to keep the lights on.
Chief operations officer Jan Oberholzer certainly didn’t help quell uncertainty when, on Wednesday, he warned that in the event Eskom ran out of diesel and water, the utility would be forced to implement stage 10 loadshedding.
Currently, Eskom relies heavily on diesel-powered open-cycle gas turbines (OCGTs) and hydro-fuelled pump storage stations to meet the country’s electricity demands, with the latter providing up to 2 700MW while the former outputs 3 000MW into the grid.
In the event that diesel is depleted, Oberholzer revealed Eskom would be forced to hike loadshedding up to stage 7, and even worse, stage 10 should the utility run out of water reserves.
This, however, is a ‘medium-risk’ at this point, and the current stage 4 loadshedding, along with ongoing technical work done on the affected generation units, should allow Eskom enough time to avert this worst case scenario.
“We are not blaming the past, this is where we are, this what we are dealing with and this is what we have to solve,” Oberholzer said at the briefing.
On Wednesday, total breakdowns amounted to 15 430MW with at least 5 505MW out on planned maintenance.