South Africans will have to brace for another bout of load shedding this weekend after Eskom confirmed that Stage 3 will be implemented until 5am on Monday 10 March.
According to a statement issued on Friday early afternoon, 2 700MW of generation capacity was lost in the past 14 hours, including Koeberg Unit 2 that was taken offline and two Kusile units whose coal operations went “sub-optimal” following adverse weather in the area.
“Higher levels of planned maintenance outages, aimed at winter preparation and meeting regulatory and environmental licensing requirements are still underway.”
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According to the power utility, the constrained capacity resulted in the increased reliance on emergency reserves during the past week, which necessitates “replenishing these critical resources” during the weekend in preparation for the business week.
Read: SA’s electricity minister on edge over strained supply
Extra engineering resources to expedite the repair of units that are currently offline will be deployed, Eskom notes.
“It is anticipated that 6 200MW will be restored to service by Monday’s evening peak.”
Eskom reiterated its commitment to ensuring that the country does not return to the levels of power interruptions experienced in 2023.
“Load shedding is a painful reminder of the past and situations such as this drives our resolve to double down and stay the course to end load shedding,” Dan Marokane, Eskom group CEO notes in the statement.
“We maintain our guidance that loadshedding is largely behind us due to structural improvements in the generation fleet,” he adds.
Eskom will continue to monitor the situation and provide updates as needed.
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