Following a full weekend of loadshedding at Stage 4 with the only respite between midnight and 05:00, South Africans will have to contend with frequent power cuts for most of the week.
On Sunday afternoon Eskom announced that Stage 4 loadshedding would need to be put in place until at least Wednesday due to “unlawful industrial action at various Eskom power stations”.
“Currently approximately 4 000MW of generation capacity is at risk due to the illegal strike action. It is therefore necessary to replenish emergency generation reserves to be able to react to unforeseen circumstances,” Eskom said in a power alert.
Eskom workers are striking after wage negotiations between unions and Eskom stalled according to a report from EWN. The strike has added frustration to an already burning fire and South Africans are visibly agitated with the situation.
While Eskom was granted a court interdict to stop the strike, it appears as if that has done little to nothing to stop the action.
As of Sunday, Eskom said that 3 894MW of capacity is unavailable due to planned maintenance while 15 472MW is unavailable due to unplanned breakdowns. Most concerning is a loss of 600MW due to a line fault in Mozambique connecting to the Hydroelectrica de Cahora Bassa power plant.
The strike action means that maintenance and outages aren’t being attended to and given how temperamental the grid is, this could become very problematic very quickly.
As always, we recommend making use of the EskomSePush app for Android and iOS devices to plan your week as best as possible.
#POWERALERT1
Unlawful industrial action at various Eskom power stations has impacted planned maintenance and repairs, and at some stations the full complement of workers have not reported for duty. As
a result, Stage 4 loadshedding will regretfully continue to be implemented pic.twitter.com/6iN4wRi8Al— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) June 26, 2022
[Image – CC 0 Pixabay]
