Cape Town left without electricity after fault at substation

Cape Town residents have been left without power on Saturday due to a technical fault at the Tafelbaai substation.

The outage has affected customers in and around the Cape Town CBD, including nearby areas.

Eskom said operators are currently on site doing inspections to determine the nature of the fault with repairs to follow shortly.

“There is currently no estimated time for electricity restoration, but this will be communicated as soon as it becomes available.”

Eskom has apologised and said it will endevaour to restore electricity as soon as possible.

Stage 2 load shedding

At the same time, stage 2 load shedding will continue throughout the country at least until 5am on Monday.

The energy provider said that the emergency generation reserves had sufficiently improved to permit a reduction of stage 4 load shedding to stage 2.

The power utility implemented stage four load shedding last week after a number of breakdowns which affected generation capacity.

Meanwhile, Energy expert Chris Yelland said the amount of money Eskom is spending on diesel to keep the lights on could have a strong impact on its liquidity.

The power utility said it is spending millions transporting and burning millions of litres of diesel to keep its open-cycle gas turbine (OCGT) stations operational.

The announcement was made during a virtual media briefing where Eskom management provided an update on the current system challenges.

Yelland said that while Eskom has had to spend the money on diesel to keep the lights on, it will have a strong impact on its finances.

Yelland said that with the current war in Ukraine, the diesel price is going up.

“Even if they use the same amount of diesel, the price is going up, so the cost is going up dramatically. In the end, Eskom gets the money even if government has to bail it out.

“That’s the way it has been, Eskom gets a massive bailout from government who’s been doing so for years.” 

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