Power utility Eskom says that load shedding was pushed to stage 6 in the early hours of the morning on Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This followed multiple unit trips at Camden Power stations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stage 6 load shedding will continue until further notice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This measure followed the implementation of Stage 3, necessitated by multiple unit trips at Majuba Power Station and a unit trip at Medupi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These resulted in a loss of 3,864 MW in generation capacity, while planned maintenance accounted for 7,506 MW.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Additionally, to replenish emergency reserves and prepare for the week ahead, stage 6 load shedding was essential,” the utility said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The group called an urgent briefing at 11h00 on Sunday to address the outages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stage 6 load shedding was last implemented about a year ago, when 13 units went offline in February 2024, and Eskom faced delays in getting them back up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It appears as if a similar situation has struck once again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to energy expert Chris Yelland, Eskom has been running its Open Cycle Gas Turbines (OCGTs) flat out this past week, citing data from analyst Clyde Mallinson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This stands in stark contrast to a media statement published by Eskom on Friday (21 February), in which it said that its systems were stable and that it had adequate reserves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The fact that load shedding returned so suddenly, along with a rapid escalation to stage 6, shows once again that South Africa’s electricity grid remains extremely vulnerable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While Eskom has improved its performance over the last year and managed to keep lights on most of the time, the group’s capacity issues have not fundamentally shifted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Any setbacks or interruptions risk plunging the country back into darkness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Economists and analysts have flagged this problem, saying that the country needs to urgently boost capacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This state of affairs also serves as a stark reminder that South Africa’s growth prospects are effectively capped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While president Cyril Ramaphosa wants to aggressively chase economic growth of 3% and higher in 2025 and beyond, the power grid cannot support the growth the country needs to shift the dial on things like jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the Bureau for Economic Research, as soon as businesses come online or expand, their dependency on the national grid will boost demand for power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As is evidenced by the current outages, the grid cannot support this consistently or with certainty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Eskom’s power woes deteriorated in the early hours of the morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":691211,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9874],"tags":[1164,1165],"class_list":["post-813720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-eskom","tag-load-shedding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813720","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=813720"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":813728,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813720\/revisions\/813728"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/691211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=813720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=813720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=813720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}