The national power utility announced stage 4 load shedding yesterday because of ‘unplanned breakdowns’.
As of yesterday afternoon, Eskom intended sustaining stage 4 load shedding until 6am today. But this came after a Thursday statement saying ‘rotational power cuts’ would continue until at least 5am on Friday morning, when the situation would be ‘reviewed’. And this after Eskom had recently said no load shedding was planned until March.
Stage 4 enables the generator to cut up to 4 000 MW – just under 10% of its nominal capacity – from the national grid.
Eskom spokesperson Nto Rikhotso said: ‘For now, the prognosis is that we will implement stage 4 load shedding between 2pm (on Friday) and 6am (on Saturday). Should anything change, Eskom will advise consumers.’
Eskom had earlier indicated that ‘unplanned breakdowns’ were still above 12 500 MW and its technical teams had been unable to restore units after ‘planned maintenance or unplanned outages’. Unplanned outages had since risen to above 13 000MW.
Eskom said wet coal had contributed to the need to increase the load shedding from stage 2 to 4.
[Picture: By Basukshitiz9, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39215289]