{"id":262311,"date":"2018-07-31T15:59:56","date_gmt":"2018-07-31T13:59:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=262311"},"modified":"2018-07-31T16:02:13","modified_gmt":"2018-07-31T14:02:13","slug":"load-shedding-risk-high-as-eskom-units-down-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/energy\/262311\/load-shedding-risk-high-as-eskom-units-down-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Load shedding risk high &#8211; units down at 9 Eskom power stations: report"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Fifteen units are down at nine South African power stations, taking over 6,000 megawatts or 13% of Eskom\u2019s output off the national grid, an internal document seen by <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-safrica-eskom-outages-exclusive\/exclusive-south-africa-faces-power-cuts-as-eskom-units-down-internal-report-idUSKBN1KL1X3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Reuters<\/a> <\/strong>showed on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>Reasons cited for the outages at the 15 units in total include an ongoing wildcat strike and low coal levels, which union sources say are related to the industrial unrest along the coal belt east of Johannesburg.<\/p>\n<p>According to Reuters, eleven of the units went down on Monday and Tuesday, underscoring the impact of the protests. The other four went down months ago or last year for reasons unrelated to the protests.<\/p>\n<p>Only two of the 15 units, both at Arnot, are expected to come back on line on Tuesday, according to the document. Nine are expected to start generating power again this week.<\/p>\n<p>The current industrial action has negatively impacted plant operations at several power stations. This includes acts of intimidation, sabotage and obstruction of access controls for personnel. While the risk of load shedding remains high during this period, Eskom has activated all its emergency structures.<\/p>\n<p>Eskom is also urgently engaging union leaders to resolve this impasse, it said.<\/p>\n<p>The group said there was a high probability of Stage 1 rotational load shedding on Monday evening from 15h00 to 21h00 as a result of the strikes.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Eskom will advise if load shedding will be conducted in either stage 1, stage 2, stage 3 or stage 4, dependent on the capacity shortage,&#8221; it said.<\/p>\n<p>Stage 1 requires 1000MW to be rotationally load shed nation-wide; stage 2 requires 2000MW; stage 3 requires 3000MW and stage 4 calls for up to 4000MW to be rotationally load shed nationally at a given period.<\/p>\n<p>Load shedding is conducted rotationally as a measure of last resort to protect the power system from a total collapse or blackout, Eskom said. Customers have been directed to their local municipalities&#8217; websites for the load shedding schedules in their area.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/energy\/262029\/high-risk-of-load-shedding-today-eskom\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">High risk of load shedding today: Eskom<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fifteen units are down at nine South African power stations, taking over 6,000 megawatts &#8211; or 13% &#8211; of Eskom\u2019s output off the national grid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":90912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9874],"tags":[1164,26],"class_list":["post-262311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-eskom","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262311"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":262319,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262311\/revisions\/262319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}