Johannesburg – South Africa faces another week of electricity supply interruptions because Eskom continues to experience breakdowns of generation units and constraints from its diesel suppliers.
The struggling power utility said it will continue load-shedding – alternating from Stage 3 during the day and Stage 4 during evening peak periods.
At the weekend, Eskom said: “Stage 3 load-shedding will continue to be implemented between 00:00 and 16:00 until Thursday, while Stage 4 load-shedding will be implemented daily during the evening peaks from 16:00 until 00:00”.
Eskom said it was still experiencing constraints from its diesel suppliers that were affecting the availability of bulk diesel to the Ankerlig and Gourikwa Open Cycle Gas Turbines, which have a combined capacity of 2 000MW.
“While we expect diesel deliveries from Tuesday onwards, should this uncertainty of supply persist, higher stages of load-shedding may be required,” said on Sunday.
“While some generation units are anticipated to return to service, it is necessary to continue the load-shedding to conserve emergency generation reserves.
“Since Friday a generation unit each at Camden and Kriel power stations were taken offline for repairs.
“Another generating unit each at Kriel and Kusile power stations were returned to service.”
Eskom repeated its apology for the continued and unfortunate load-shedding, which it said was implemented only as a last resort because of the shortage of generation capacity and the need to attend to breakdowns.
“We currently have 5 897MW on planned maintenance, while another 16 739MW of capacity is unavailable due to breakdowns,” said Eskom.
