Following yet another extension, South Africans will have to contend with rolling power cuts until Wednesday this week.
This comes after five power stations had breakdowns at the weekend putting further strain on already strained generation capacity. On Friday Eskom reported that 11 780MW of capacity was unavailable due to unplanned breakdowns while 7 071MW was unavailable due to planned maintenance.
As of Sunday afternoon, those figures sat at 12 915MW and 6 545MW respectively.
“Additional breakdowns have occurred at the Tutuka, Majuba, Kusilie, Matimba and Duvha, adding to previous breakdowns at the Kriel and Kendal power stations. Further to this we have had delays in units returning to service at Hendrina, Duvha and restoring full load on the Cahora Bassa line,” Eskom wrote in a power alert on Sunday.
One slice of good news is that, according to the utility, a generation unit at Matimba and one at Medupi were returned to service at the weekend. That “good news” is relative however as it was immediately followed by news of several more breakdowns.
Two steps forward, five steps back as it were.
With this in mind Stage 2 loadshedding is set to remain a fixture for South Africans until at least 05:00 on Wednesday morning. Considering the state of the grid however, we would recommend anticipating further loadshedding this week.
Be sure to check your schedule for when your area is set to have the power cut. You can visit Eskom’s loadshedding website or use an app such as EskomSePush. EskomSePush is available to download for free on the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store.
We also highly recommend following Eskom on Twitter and Facebook for updates as they happen. With the high number of outages there is the danger of Stage 2 increasing to a higher stage.
Stage 2 loadshedding will be extended to 05:00 on Wednesday following the loss of further
generation capacity and to replenish emergency generation reserves@News24 @SABCNews @NewzroomAfrika @eNCA @IOL @ewnupdates @SundayTimesZA @SowetanLIVE pic.twitter.com/P9xezDoIBG— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) March 14, 2021
