Cape Town – Eskom CEO, Andre De Ruyter, has warned that load shedding will continue for the next ten days, as the power utility works on replenishing more generation capacity to the national power grid.
De Ruyter warned that the national grid remained under enormous strain due to the recent strikes, reports said.
He said this during a media briefing on Monday.
Reports said that the recent illegal strike action had a disastrous impact on the operations of six stations, namely Duvha, Matla, Camden, Hendrina, Arnot and Lethabo.
According to The Citizen, Eskom estimated a high demand of 31 980 MW for Monday night while it only had 27 013 MW, hence the rolling blackouts were set to remain interchangeable as per demand.
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However, Eskom executives were looking at moving the country to stage two by Friday should there be no interruptions to the existing units, the report said.
“Unfortunately, due to the unlawful strike, it’s going to take a number of weeks to catch up on the maintenance backlog,
“No routine maintenance, lack of operating personnel means that some units won’t return as planned – and it will impact supply,” the report quoted Eskom COO, Jan Oberholzer as saying.
However, Koeberg power station in the Western Cape was expected to give a boost to the generation capacity of the national grid, reported EWN.
The report said it could possibly take two weeks before unit 2 at Koeberg was in full capacity and able to cut the pressure on the national power grid.
As part of its efforts to battle load shedding, Eskom planned to make additional land for renewable energy projects via independent power producers, the report said.
Stage 4 loadshedding will be implemented on Sunday afternoon, with varying stages of loadshedding implemented during the week. pic.twitter.com/tQB70UlK3J
— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) July 9, 2022
On July 9, the power utility announced its move to implement Stage 4 load shedding starting, Sunday July 10, with varying stages of load shedding implemented during the course of the week.
This was caused by the loss of five large generation units within 36 hours and the delays in returning five other units to service which were forced offline to undergo emergency repair, the statement said.
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Picture: Twitter/ @Eskom_SA
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Compiled by Olwethu Mpeshe
