Eskom starts 12 hour load shedding
[Update] As of 11h30, load shedding has entered into stage two, Eskom announced
Eskom has announced that it will implement stage one load shedding across the country on Tuesday (27 January), due to additional technical problems being experienced at its power plants.
The rolling blackouts will begin at 10h00 and end at 22h00, the group said.
Stage 1 allows for up to 1000MW of the national load to be shed, stage 2 for up to 2000MW, and stage 3 for up to 4000MW.
According to a system status bulletin issued late on Monday, electricity demand was expected to outstrip supply for the remainder of the working week.
Eskom implemented stage 1 load shedding on Monday, escalating the status to stage 2 after a third of its capacity was wiped off the grid.
According to MoneyWeb, unplanned outages increased to 10,515 MW on Monday with a further 3,429MW of capacity taken out of service for planned maintenance.
That means that a total of 13,944MW was out of service on Monday.
Eskom CEO Tshediso Matona said in an operational update this month, that the country’s power supply would remain severely constrained in the coming months while Eskom dealt with its maintenance backlog.
In February 900 megawatts is to be taken off the grid when one of Koeberg nuclear power station’s units undergoes maintenance.
Matona has said that Eskom will need 5,000 MW in order to address its maintenance backlog.
Eskom’s load shedding schedule can be found here.
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