Eskom warns of load shedding again – two days after ending it

 ·25 Jul 2022

Power utility Eskom has warned that it may be forced to re-introduce load shedding at short notice after five of its generating units tripped on Monday morning.

The group said that load shedding may have to be introduced if it loses any more generating capacity.

The units, which tripped in the early hours of Monday morning, took 2,000MW of capacity off the network.

“While some generation units at other power stations are expected to return to service during the day, these will take time to load to full capacity,” it said.

“Should there be any further loss of generation capacity during the day, or some units fail to return to service as anticipated, load shedding may be required to be implemented at short notice.”

Eskom currently has 1,018 MW off in planned maintenance, with another 17,022MW off due to breakdowns. It said it is working to restore units to service as soon as possible.

South Africans have suffered through more than five weeks of continuous load shedding, with stages hitting as high as stage 6. The outages were primarily driven by illegal strikes at its power stations as workers demanded higher wages.

After the strikes ended, the power utility used daily load shedding at various stages to rebuild capacity. Load shedding was suspended earlier than anticipated on Saturday (23 July).

The country is waiting on president Cyril Ramaphosa to announce a promised ‘package’ of interventions to help alleviate the country’s power crisis.


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