Stage 4 load shedding back until Thursday

Eskom has announced that it will be implementing stage 4 load shedding, starting at 10am on Tuesday until 5am on Thursday morning.

The dark lords at Megawatt Park said the escalation of rolling blackouts to stage 4 was the result of a problem at the Kendal Power Station.

Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha said a sudden tripping of three Kendal Power Station units (1 920MW maximum generating capacity) has forced the implementation of stage 4 load shedding starting at 10am this morning.

“This will last until 5am on Thursday morning. Thereafter, load shedding will be reduced to state 2 until midnight on Friday.”

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Mantshantsha said a conveyor belt feeding coal into Kendal Power Station failed.

“To conserve coal, the power output of the generators was reduced, but this required fuel oil to be used to sustain the boiler combustion. Subsequently, the fuel oil plant supplying the units experienced a failure and shut down.”

“This resulted in the trip of the three generating units. The Kendal units are anticipated to return to service by the weekend,” he said.

Mantshantsha added that prior to the trip, a generating unit each at Arnot and Medupi power stations had been taken offline for emergency repairs.

“The breakdowns have resulted in intense usage of the pumped storage schemes and the Open Cycle Gas Turbines. These emergency generation reserves are designed to fill the generation gap resulting from exactly for this kind of emergency, and obviously cannot be used continuously.”

“While some generation units are anticipated to return to service over the next 24 hours, it is necessary to increase the load shedding to conserve the emergency reserves,” Mantshantsha said.

Load shedding during Summer

On Monday, the givers and takers of light said deliberate sporadic power cuts were likely to be implemented during summer months.

The embattled power utility gave an update on the current system challenges, this as the country currently battles another bout of load shedding

Eskom Chief Operating Officer Jan Oberholzer said Eskom suffered a ‘disastrous’ week as 42 generating units tripped, which resulted in the current blackouts.

He said there are likely to be power cuts during the summer months too.

“We are ramping up planned maintenance as we head into summer. We also find that our maintenance is not yet yielding required results. Units return to work, and then breakdown. This is due to lack of skills.”

Oberholzer said there have been a number of comments surrounding why Eskom is load shedding because President Cyril Ramaphosa’s plan on the energy crisis should have helped.

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