Load shedding eased to stage 4

Power utility Eskom says that load shedding will be reduced to stage 4 from 00h30 on Monday (24 February) following the successful return of most downed units.

Eskom was forced to implement stage 3 load shedding on Saturday after five units tripped at Majuba and one unit tripped at Medupi.

Load shedding was escalated to stage 6 after four more units went down at Camden in the early hours of Sunday morning.

The group says that all five units at Majuba, two units at Camden, and one unit at Medupi have been successfully recovered since Saturday, totalling eight out of ten generation units that tripped this weekend.

Additionally, emergency reserve replenishment is progressing well.

“The return of these units comes after identifying the root causes of multiple unit trips, which were unconnected and purely technical in nature, related to electrical and control system issues in auxiliary parts of these power stations,” Eskom said.

While load shedding will be reduced on Monday, it will still stay at stage 4 until further notice.

The group said at a briefing on Sunday that all units should be back online by Tuesday and that the grid should be fully recovered by the end of the week.

Eskom will provide an update on Monday afternoon.

Planned maintenance still stands at 7,706MW, which Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said has been a contributing factor to the sudden re-emergence of load shedding.

He said that keeping so many megawatts offline for “aggressive” maintenance means there is a much smaller ‘buffer’ in the event that units fail.

So when units go offline unexpectedly, load shedding has to be implemented to secure the grid.

However, Ramokgopa said that this is something that cannot be compromised on.

He said the aggressive maintenance regime needs to be upheld – risks and all – so that the grid can become more reliable and stable.

Neglecting maintenance would just lead to more trips and breakdowns, making load shedding more frequent, as was the case in previous years.