Eskom ramps up load shedding to stage 3

South Africa’s crippling power cuts are set to continue after Eskom on Tuesday ramped up load shedding to stage 3.

Stage 3 load shedding

Stage 3 load shedding will be implemented from 4pm to 5am on Tuesday, and on Wednesday during the same time slot.

Thereafter, stage 2 will continue to be implemented from 5am to 4pm daily until further notice.

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Eskom said the rotational power cuts were due to a high number of breakdowns at its power stations.

The struggling power utility said it also wants to preserve the remaining emergency generation reserves while creating space to replenish the dam levels at the pumped storage schemes.

“A generating unit each at Camden and Kendal power stations were taken offline for repairs over the past 24 hours. The delay in returning to service a generating unit each at Arnot, Kriel and Matla power stations has contributed to the capacity constraints.

“A generating unit each at Arnot, Duvha, Grootvlei, Kendal, Kriel, Lethabo, and two units at Majuba power stations were returned to service during this period,” Eskom said in a statement.

The power utility said it currently had 4 394MW on planned maintenance, while another 16 880MW of capacity was unavailable due to breakdowns.

Eskom’s diesel demand

Meanwhile, Eskom has asked National Treasury for R19.5 billion to buy diesel.

The parastatal has spent R11 billion on diesel in the 10 months through October and warned in November that load shedding could intensify if it runs out of funds to buy the fuel.

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On Tuesday, Eskom said due to the depletion of its budget to acquire diesel for the Open Cycle Gas Turbines, it was forced to strictly conserve the remainder of the fuel reserves to protect against further unplanned outages.

“The refuelling and maintenance outage starting this week, as well as the long-term operation project of Unit 1 of the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station, together with the October chimney failure that has forced three generation units offline at Kusile Power Station, will further reduce available generation capacity and significantly increase the occurrence of load shedding during the next six to 12 months.”

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