Eskom sent the country into a frenzy when it confirmed that from Wednesday, South Africa will be moved to stage 4 loadshedding.
Stage 4 loadshedding confirmed: What Eskom said
The national power supplier admitted that a further strain on its generation capacity prompted the decision to place the country on a heightened level of rotational power cuts.
Eskom explained that stage 4 loadshedding will commence from 12:00 on Wednesday until 05:00 on Friday 29 October 2021. Thereafter, power cuts will be reduced to stage 2 indefinitely.
“Over the past 24 hours, a unit each at Medupi, Kusile and Matla power stations tripped while a unit each at Lethal and Arnot power stations were forced to shut down This constrained the power system further requiring extensive use of emergency reserves and therefore, hampering the recovery of these reserves,” Eskom said.
A summer of blackouts on the cards
Earlier in the week, Eskom had noted that in a bid to maintain an average of 5 000MW on planned repairs, the utility would increase its reliability maintenance programme.
On Wednesday, the national power supplier revealed that 5 301MW was out on planned maintenance, while more than 14 900MW of power was not feeding into the grid due to breakdowns.
“Some generating units have returned to service and we anticipate another two units to return to service during the day. In addition, Koeberg Unit 1 is expected to return to service today and begin ramping up to full output within 48 hours,” Eskom added.
Eskom Group chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer revealed that more than likely, South Africans will have to make do with a summer of blackouts due to the increased reliability maintenance programme.
“Eskom concedes that loadshedding carries a significant damaging effect to the economy. Year to date, the energy availability factor (EAF) has declined to 65%, against a target of 70% EAF. A key contributor to the low EAF was the high levels of planned maintenance during the summer months. However, there has also been an increase in unplanned outages during this period,” he said.